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Carn Davidson: Mining the depths of Emotion
No performing artist – any artist, for that matter – can deny that thee past three years have been excruciating… and in many respects, life-changing. Meanwhile, in the realm opposite to the realm of the artist, epidemiologists, virologists and geneticists are frightfully busy. But they are not the only professional engaged in plumbing the depths of human existence. Psychologists will surely be occupied analysing the emotional toll on humanity post pandemic for many decades to come. Oh! How these last three years have changed us as a species…and not necessarily completely for the better…
Certainly as an interplanetary community that has been brutalised by social distancing we seem to have grown further apart from each other. The differences that once attracted us to one another have inhabited the frayed edges of each of our lives. And living on those proverbial edges day in and day out we can no longer agree on anything. The value of medicine and vaccinations, for instance is just one of those issues that have torn us apart. And then there’s what’s good for our children… should they be schooled in-class online?
Perhaps the fact that all these issues – instead of uniting us in discourse – has made us a race of antagonists, incapable of having an intelligent discussion, with a view to bringing us closer as a community. Everything we have to deal with in our post-pandemic lives seems to have become an assault on the senses. As we look inward to re-evaluate our lives we ought to ask: “What kind of humanity have we become? Why were we so divided? As Canadians we once gloried in our differences, yet now, our differences appear to weigh even heavier on our senses.
We no longer celebrate – as we often did here in Canada – our differences. We have always glorified our pluralism in ways that few other countries – even culturally homogenous ones – have glorified theirs. We were once proud of our so-called “multicultural” society. But we the pandemic turned that “otherness” that was once beloved to Canada into a kind of tribalism. Our languages – we spoke so many in Canada – have become weaponised. Verbs have become lethal weapons as we air our views and divide society… and social media has become the battlefield on which we fight our culture wars.
But surely this is abhorrent to all civilised societies. Our diversity itself has made use uniquely homogenous and we celebrate that on every public holiday – despite the surreptitious efforts of the political elite to divide us. No one is more outraged than artists – the performing artists who alone fostered and forged loving communities at every performance. For those of us who have short memories perhaps the strongest reality check may have certainly been in evidence at the final performance of Gord Downie and his beloved ensemble the Tragically Hip.
And then there is Jazz… an artistic style of African American music now adopted by the whole world where the ideals of togetherness and sharing and yielding the stage – every now and then – to the “other”, to experience our “otherness” in the most elemental and pristine for of sharing. This is what, we have found to be the epitomé, the pinnacle of shared humanity. And this only happens because the avowed intention of each musician is to find common ground for human expression. And this is not only true of “jazz” but all music through the ages… and not just between each performing musician – even ones performing solo – but between musicians and their audiences. The very act of playing music, whether on stage or delivering it to an audience via other media is an act of creation designed to make for a tremendous ripple; indeed, a veritable flood that washes away each and every “otherness” en route to creating a deeply emotional kind of “togetherness” in its wake.
This act lies at the very heart of a monumental recording by trombonist William Carn and his wife, the saxophonist Tara Davidson; a recording entitled The History of Us, brimming with music that plumbs the depths of the preternatural and the emotional. It is a recording like few others that we may have listened to with more than our ears – but with our very hearts. On the face of it the recording encompasses two suites – glued together by an elegy to the Carn-Davidson cat, Murphy – both of which are intended to be sonic-biographical in nature.
The first, written by William Carn, leaps off his family’s migration from Hong Kong, via Costa Rica, where he was born, before emigrating to Canada. The second suite is Tara Davidson’s epic love-letter to her family – her mother and father, and to her Gaelic origins. The idea for Mr Carn’s music has everything to do with his sense of wonder at being an immigrant [to] Canada. Miss Davidson’s music, conceived in 2015 examines her own Gaelic heritage in the deeply personal context of love and loss experienced within her family.
It is also no accident that this music has deeper meaning. No accident because it is very likely that the composers may not have intended for listeners to read anything more profound into the music than two family stories that tell nothing more than the [prescient] lives that bloom after immigration. But Carn-Davidson 9 is a nonet comprising of instrumental “voices”: four brass musicians, three woodwinds, a contrabassist and a drummer; no vocalist to tell these stories in lyrical recitatives or songs that would be sung.
But the ensemble also sculpts its own – very singular – eschewing a chordal instrument [such as the piano or the guitar] making for a very unique harmonic language. Moreover, the fact that the music is thematically so very personal and biographical – albeit without a written [and sung] narrative to go with it – lends itself to interpretation with a myriad of layers of meaning.
The musicians are open to the idea that this music may affect listeners in different ways – although the intended meaning will be uniform. However, no matter what the intended effect is on listeners the depth of meaning will almost always be the same. This music plumbs the depths of emotion that almost anyone – anywhere in the northern part of our continent, at any rate – will certainly relate to. This sense of “otherness” is something we all understand in the USA or Canada.
Especially in Canada, that is experiencing a reckoning because the Indigenous Peoples are finally asserting themselves. So while our lives are not at all threatened [only because Indigenous People are, unlike us, by nature, welcoming and accepting]. But because other forces – such as the violent heart of our politics – we must take away much more than simply immigrant stories.
Artists such as William Carn and Tara Davidson – musicians [and poets, dancers, dramatists and painters] – have, since Plato’s Republic, been torch-bearers who hold up a flame with a view to illuminating society – good, bad, and ugly. But as willing participants in their art, every member of their audience must of necessity, give up the right to being a passive observer. On the contrary, being a part of the community that shares in the work of art, we must be provoked into taking a stand one way or another.
We recognise, for instance, a deep emotion – say ‘love’ and ‘acceptance’ – and must be in a position to embrace it or fight against it [if we are so non-empathetically inclined. Moreover, if we are not so [empathetically] inclined and can no longer engage in discourse arising out of art, then the law of force and public violence ensues.
Sadly, because politicians of every stripe seem to be losing control of stemming the onrush of “force” our best allies may seem – happily – to be impassioned artists of the uncommon calibre of William Carn and Tara Davidson. In coming to terms with their own sense of time and place – with The History of Us – Mr Carn and Miss Davidson use their individual intuitive musical geniuses to shape something that has become a kind of vivid cautionary tale [at least for us immigrant Canadians] based on their own very personal experiences of what re-location has meant for each of them.
William Carn’s three-movement composition – entitled the “Finding Home Suite” opens the album, tracing his family’s voyage from Hong Kong during a tumultuous time to arrive on Canada’s shores via Costa Rica – the sub-text of the Costa Rican adventure has its own dramatic diversion as his father’s family has a Chinese-Costa Rican bloodline. Moreover the trombonist was born in San Jose. Tara Davidson’s “Suite 1985” closes the set. The saxophonist and reeds player paints her Gaelic heritage vividly – with characteristic candor, unfolding eloquently – also in three movements – in elliptical and undulating waves as the family – and the music – begins to beat upon Canada’s shore.
Both the works stretch the transitions between solo and ensemble writing, the use of harmonic community between the performers link the melodic [narrative] elements of the action and its employment resulting from the innovatory and idiomatically, improvisatory interpretation by the musicians. In both suites conflict is followed by resolution also naturally resulting from the softest touch of the female characters in the narratives – the composers’ mothers.
Low horns [Srirantha Beddage’s bass clarinet and baritone saxophone, and Christian Overton’s bass trombone] create theatrical growling as life’s disruptions occur. Miss Davidson’s flutes and the softer flugelhorns – together with her also saxophone and wailing trumpets provide the gentle “vocal” lines that mirror recitatives, while Mr Carn’s trombone together with Andrew Downing’s majestic bass playing aid and abet the music’s uncommon gravitas.
The music of Mr Carn’s suite – from its opening movement “A New Life” and its middle movement “A Mother’s Song” to the suite’s dénouement – its third “Home” movement awakens our own sense of migration, of displacement, alienation in a new country that takes it time to accept differences. This is resolved in the familial love of mother [and father], expressed from the second into third movement of the suits. Colour and tone textures are exquisitely used as Mr Carn directs musicians to paint word pictures and evoke imagery in a kind of Richard Strauss-like manner as the music with its thrustful vigour, jagged rhythms and changing moods that [invariably] end with a burst of passion.
Miss Davidson’s work is muted but no less emotional. The hushed close of the con moto first movement “The Epitaph” [to her mother] leads into a deeply reflective adagio with sustained melodic lines leading to kind of Bartókian scherzo which describes the second tumultuous movement “Swept out to Sea”, which, in turn, leads to the final theme and variations featuring Miss Davidson’s commanding resolution of the suite in a burst of lyrical melodic and harmonic fervour as she signs off “Wisely if Sincerely” [the final movement of the suite.
“Goodbye Old Friend” is a soaring, elegiac work written by Mr Carn in memory of the couple’s cat Murphy. Not only does this piece act as the bridge between the suites, but it also unites the music [of both suites] in the depth of its oceanic emotion that it precipitates upon the listeners’ sensibilities. This is a stimulating disc – which even in its more studied and circumspect and softer-grained tones and gentler moments provides us with powerfully emotional music. But it is this very “emotional” aspect of the music that also softens the sense of mortality that we earned courtesy of the pandemic when – thanks to social-distancing we lost all sense of community.
The pandemic spared no one. Artists like Tara Davidson and William Carn also lost everything; gigs dried up because venues closed indefinitely, art shows and music and cultural festivals were cancelled. The news was grim hour after hour, day by day. Social media was worse – with all manner of conspiracy theoreticians who seemed to seize the day. One bright ray of light appeared to be the use of social media – such as Facebook to broadcast live concerts from the living room. Attendance was questionable as was the capacity to earn a decent stipend from these events.
But now that we are back together again we can marvel at the sense of social-consciousness of the artists in our society; artistic with the uncommon genius of Miss Davidson and Mr Carn and their [musicians of the] Carn-Davidson 9 who are back by virtue of this disc [among many other things] to remind us that our humanity must be inclusive because at the end of the day are all “others”, striving to come together in a forward-thinking community deeply respectful of “each other”.
How one composer spent four decades forging a distinctly Québécois path through the experimental music landscape
When Joane Hétu picks up her alto saxophone, she claims territory. At sixty-six, the Montréal composer, vocalist, and saxophonist has spent forty years carving out space for experimental music in Québec, building institutions and communities that define the province’s musique actuelle scene.
Her latest recording, Elle a son mot à dire, captures Hétu leading Ensemble SuperMusique through thirteen of her compositions from across two decades. The album opens with “Elle n’a pas de mot” (She has no words)—a brief ambient piece that stacks wordless singing atop a chorus of “whirly tubes,” ribbed hoses spun above players that pirouette through the harmonic series. An apt introduction to an artist who has spent her career finding new ways to give voice to the unspoken.
Finding Her Voice in the Underground
Hétu’s path began in the early 1980s with avant-pop groups like Wondeur Brass, Justine, and Les Poules. These bands merged the pluralist ethos of New York’s downtown scene with European progressive sensibilities while maintaining something distinctly Québécois. “I was very young, in my twenties, and this fusion happened quite instinctively, without real premeditation,” she recalls. Through connections to figures like Zeena Parkins, Ikue Mori, and Fred Frith, and the Recommended Records network, these groups found their place in an international experimental music community.
Even while performing with these bands, Hétu was thinking beyond individual artistic expression. In 1980, she co-founded SuperMusique with Danielle Palardy Roger and Diane Labrosse. Eight years later, they organized a Festival of Innovative Women Musicians, devoted entirely to women’s groups working in avant-garde music—a radical curatorial gesture that signaled Hétu’s growing interest in building infrastructure alongside making music.
“We were connected to the New York scene,” Hétu explains, “but we wanted to create something here, something that would support the community we were building in Montréal.”
From Performance to Institution
The instinct to support that community would shape Hétu’s career as much as her compositions. By 1998, she had taken on co-direction of Ensemble SuperMusique, transforming the organization into one that explicitly welcomes “emerging artists, mid-career artists, and major figures alike.” Where many experimental music scenes fragment along generational lines, Hétu has consistently worked to bridge those gaps.
“This intergenerational cohabitation is a great richness for us,” she explains. “It opens perspectives, stimulates listening, and provokes essential exchanges.”
On Elle a son mot à dire, this collaborative philosophy becomes musical practice. In “Mot elle a,” vocalist Sarah Albu’s written part interweaves with improvised percussion, creating what Hétu calls “flexible, malleable” pieces that depend on interpretation. “For now, I only have one recording, but I hope it will live through other recordings and interpretations,” she says. “This is one of the objectives of open scores: to encourage multiple and living interpretations.”
[click on image to enlarge]
The Economics of Experiment
Running an experimental music organization led Hétu deeper into the infrastructure questions that determine which music gets heard and preserved. As founder and longtime president of DAME Records (Distribution Ambiances Magnétiques Etcetera), she took on the less glamorous work of documenting and distributing Canadian experimental music—a role she maintained for three decades.
“I’ve always had a passion for sound recording,” she reflects. “From 1985, I got involved in Ambiances Magnétiques, then DAME took over.” The work came with unexpected costs. “After my daughter’s birth in 1990, I was looking for a certain stability, knowing that tours would be more difficult. Naively, I believed that having a record label would offer a form of security. It was quite the opposite. This enterprise cost me a lot in creative time. Looking back, it’s perhaps what I regret most: having carried it for so long, for thirty-three years.”
Despite the personal sacrifice, DAME has documented a vital chapter in Canadian music history, providing a platform for artists like Jean Derome, Pierre-Yves Martel, Tim Brady, and dozens of others who might otherwise have remained unrecorded. “DAME documents this precious musical heritage and ensures that these musics are represented, supported, available, and that this artistic history is accessible,” Hétu explains.
Claiming Creative Territory
The questions of space and belonging that drove Hétu’s institutional work find their most direct artistic expression in her concept of territory. The idea runs through much of her work, most explicitly in her piece La femme territoire ou 21 fragments d’humus. For Hétu, territory encompasses everything from the intimate to the political: “the Earth, my room, Quebec, my soul—a woman who becomes vastitude.”
“In it, I take a position, as a woman, on my territory—intimate and collective,” she explains. “I doubted while writing it; I had trouble trusting myself. Today, I’m happy with the path traveled and with this work.”
The territorial thinking extends to her approach to voice and instrumentation. Hétu never formally learned to sing, drawing from influences like Tenko, Phil Minton, Jaap Blonk, and Paul Dutton. “I have a deep love for the voice and its noise-making potential. It’s visceral and fundamental to me,” she says. In her work with La chorale bruitiste JOKER, founded in 2012, she explores what collective vocal improvisation can accomplish using techniques like soundpainting.
[click on image to enlarge]
Seasons of Composition
Hétu’s relationship to place extends to her famous engagement with Québec’s harsh winters. Where others see obstacles to cultural life, she found creative catalysts. Her trilogy Musique d’hiver emerged from the practical reality that “January, February and March are rather quiet in the record industry, which leaves time to compose.” But the relationship between season and creativity runs deeper than scheduling.
“I love winter, I love the sound, the cocoon effect it produces,” she explains. The final piece in the trilogy, Récits de neige, focused specifically on snow’s geometry: “I hoped to compose 30 short pieces that musicians could amalgamate as they want, like snowflakes, which each have a different geometry.”
Building for the Future
Today, as Hétu approaches her fifth decade in music, she remains committed to the experimental principles that have guided her career while grappling with new challenges facing the experimental music community. “I believe the public has the capacity to welcome innovation,” she argues. “But it needs tools, which are becoming scarce: radio broadcasting, interviews, production support, and venues dedicated to new music.”
Her work with Ensemble SuperMusique continues to demonstrate that experimental music can build lasting institutions and communities. Recent projects include ongoing workshops in graphic scores and conducting gestures, international collaborations, and regular concert series that have sustained the musique actuelle community for decades.
“I respond to the call, to the impulse of the moment. I am still, fundamentally, the same composer,” Hétu admits. Viewed across four decades, her work reveals a consistent thread: the understanding that experimental music concerns itself with creating the conditions for a community of artists to flourish.
In an era when funding for experimental music remains precarious and cultural institutions focus on measurable outcomes, Hétu’s approach offers a different model. Her career demonstrates that sometimes the most radical act is creating space for other voices to emerge, building the infrastructure for artistic communities to sustain themselves across generations. After four decades, Joane Hétu still has something to say. She’s still creating spaces for others to find their own voices within the experimental music territory she has helped map. In Québec’s cultural landscape, that may be her most enduring composition.
“One of the most unforgettable moments of the Festival was the electrifying performance by Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue”
The Festival International de Jazz de Montréal took place from June 26 to July 5, 2025, in the Quartier des Spectacles. The 45th edition of the world’s largest jazz festival was a resounding success, attracting jazz enthusiasts from around the globe.
The Heart of the Festival
Located in the heart of downtown Montreal, the Festival site becomes a meeting place for jazz lovers worldwide for ten days. The area is closed to all vehicular traffic and remains open until midnight, allowing visitors to enjoy close to 150 indoor concerts and more than 350 free, open-air shows presented on the specially redesigned Quartier des Spectacles.
A Personal Journey
As a jazz fan and festival enthusiast, I had always intended to attend the Montreal Jazz Festival. Despite missing several chances, I finally managed to go this year, although for a shorter time than I would have preferred, from June 30th to July 3rd.
Arrival and First Impressions
I enjoyed a pleasant 5-hour Via Rail train trip from Toronto to Montreal, arriving around 2 PM. After settling into my Airbnb, I found the jazz festival site and met up with Danilo Navas, the editor-in-chief of That Canadian Magazine. We eagerly waited for the first act to perform on the TD Stage, a free concert by UK tenor saxophonist Nubya Garcia.
Garcia and her band delivered an energetic and incredibly enjoyable set that featured music from both of her recordings. This is an artist I will be watching more closely.
One of the most unforgettable moments of the festival was the electrifying performance by Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue. This mind-bending concert had everything thrown into the mix, creating an explosive fusion of world jazz, funk, and New Orleans soul.
The unbridled excitement and energy from the stage were infectious, drawing the audience in and making them an essential part of the show. The crowd danced, cheered, and grooved to the irresistible beats, unable to resist the magnetic pull of Trombone Shorty’s music.
After this exhilarating experience, the only thing left to do was find a chill spot to unwind and bask in the afterglow of this burst of New Orleans magic.
Canada Day Celebrations
On July 1st, Canada Day, I took a walk to Old Montreal to check out the celebrations. The area, reminiscent of Europe, was closed off to most traffic, allowing visitors to enjoy the numerous restaurants with patios and sidewalk cafes. I indulged in a coffee and biscotti at one inviting cafe before making my way back to the jazz festival area, with a brief stop in Chinatown for some delicious dumplings and soup.
Memorable Performances
This Canada Day was my most active in terms of concerts, with three free shows happening almost consecutively at outdoor venues.
The Sugar Darlings: Miche Love, a key figure in the Montreal blues scene, captivated the audience with her powerful and soulful voice, supported by the electrifying solos of Paul Lucyk on guitar and Kaven Jalbert on saxophone.
Julien Fillion Band: This lively quartet, led by the talented Julien Fillion on saxophone, guitar, and keyboards, delivered an energetic performance to a rain-soaked crowd. The show must go on despite the unpredictable weather challenges.
Endea Owens & the Cookout: Detroit-raised recording artist, bassist, and composer Endea Owens captivated the audience with her soulful singing and jazz and soul-infused playing.
My Last Full Day at the Festival
My last full day at the festival was spent exploring the grounds and soaking in the vibrant atmosphere of the Montreal Jazz Festival, discovering the many facets of this grand celebration.
Christine Jensen Quartet at Le Studio TD
One of the last jazz concerts I attended was at an indoor venue that offered a free performance by the Christine Jensen Quartet, which featured alto saxophonist Christine Jensen. This outstanding group of world-class musicians includes Jim Doxas on drums, Gary Versace on keys, and Adrian Vedady on contrabass. The quartet played tunes from Jensen’s latest recording, “Day Moon,” released in 2023, as well as selections from her other quartet albums.
A Memorable Experience
In summary, the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal is an excellent event held at a captivating venue, offering a wonderful experience with many free concerts and more. I look forward to returning and delving even further into the modern music of our era.
Editor’s Note: We will publish our photo gallery from the 45th Festival International de Jazz de Montréal in a separate post in the next few days.
Luminato at Harbourfront – June 15, 2025
Somd’agua: A Dance Migration Performance
A mesmerizing collaboration featuring Esie Mensah, Alex Oliver, Reimundo Sosa Reinoldes, and Adrianna Yanuziello, Somd’agua provided a profound exploration of Afro-Brazilian culture. The performance artfully depicted the sacred connection between the deities Oxum and Yemanjá through movement and rhythm.
The fusion of powerful singing, chanting, and dynamic Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian percussion created an immersive backdrop for the dancers’ graceful movements.
As the river meets the sea, the performers wove their magic, creating a flowing exchange of energies that stirred deep emotions and evoked memories of distant lands.
The natural setting of Harbourfront Centre enhanced the experience, with the breeze from Lake Ontario and passing tall ships complementing the performance’s aquatic themes. The audience’s enthusiastic participation peaked during the climactic duet, where the dancers achieved perfect harmony.
Santé! By Cirque Kikasse
Quebec’s innovative circus troupe transformed a food truck into an extraordinary performance space.
Their show seamlessly blended fast-food preparation with spectacular acrobatics, showcasing remarkable athleticism and gravity-defying feats both on and above their unique mobile stage.
Musical Performances and Workshops
Afro-Indigenous roots of Colombia Cumbia workshop with Beny Esguerra
Beny Esguerra, the Juno-nominated multi-instrumentalist, delivered an engaging exploration of Afro-Colombian rhythms. Accompanied by his daughter, who acted as her father’s assistant. She helped distribute percussion instruments.
Esguerra created an interactive experience where the distributed percussion instruments became integral to the musical performance. It featured a fun and engaging demonstration that showcased the communicative power of drumming.
Kombilesa Mi
This vibrant Afro-Colombian ensemble brought the distinctive sounds of San Basilio de Palenque to life. Their dynamic performance merged traditional rhythms (Mapalé, Bullerengue, Son Palenquero) with contemporary hip-hop elements, performing in both Spanish and their native language, Palenque.
Formed in 2011, the group serves as a cultural bridge, connecting young people with their heritage while embracing modern musical expressions. The show was well-attended, and these fantastic entertainers had the crowd singing along, clapping in time, and seemingly having a joyful experience.
The festival experience concluded perfectly with an evening stroll along the Harbourfront paths. The day’s artistic celebrations settled into memory as night descended over Lake Ontario.
Photo Gallery: Adrianna Yunuziello Dance Migration performing Somd’agua
Photos by Paul J. Youngman [click on images to enlarge]
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