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.”

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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.

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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.

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]

Toronto drummer navigates economic pressures and streaming exploitation while building sustainable artistic communities

When Stefan Hegerat talks about his hometown music scene, love and frustration compete in his voice. “It’s a difficult time in Toronto,” the drummer and composer says, reflecting on a city where rising costs have shuttered venues and forced countless artists to abandon their creative pursuits. “Everyone is feeling like the city is untenable.”

Hegerat isn’t waving the white flag. With the release of his latest album Icterus II under the project name stef.in, the Toronto musician has created something personal and political. The record is a sonic response to the economic and cultural pressures squeezing creative communities across Canada.

From Pandemic Isolation to Creative Breakthrough

The album, five years in the making, emerged from pandemic isolation and a growing awareness of what Hegerat calls “systemic collapse.” Written largely during lockdown, when his quartet couldn’t rehearse together, the record grapples with climate crisis, socioeconomic warfare, and governmental failure. Rather than descending into pure darkness, Hegerat made a conscious choice to weave joy and hope throughout the compositions.

“I wrote a lot of this either going into the pandemic or during the pandemic,” he explains. “My default quite often is to veer away from that darkness as much as I can because I think it makes for depressing music if you’re just leaning on that entirely. So I’m also trying to really consciously put as much joy as I can into the music.”

This balance between despair and optimism reflects Hegerat’s broader approach to navigating multiple musical identities. He leads stef.in’s experimental rock explorations, plays in the punk band Chinese Medicine, and fronts the experimental pop project Parade. Each requires different skills, different mindsets. This reality challenges the music industry’s obsession with neat categorization.

The Multi-Genre Survival Strategy

“Sometimes people take for granted that jazz musicians aren’t necessarily rock or pop musicians,” Hegerat notes. “Sometimes people just assume oh, if you play jazz, complex music, you can play anything, like rock music’s easy. But it’s a completely different mindset. It’s different skills, different approaches.”

This genre fluidity has become artistic philosophy and economic necessity. Like many Canadian musicians, Hegerat cobbles together a living through teaching, freelance work, and multiple projects. The diversity isn’t just creative. It’s survival.

His frustration with the current music economy runs deep, particularly regarding streaming platforms. Last year, Hegerat made the decision to move away from Spotify for his own music, citing the company’s exploitative payment structure and broader concerns about how digital platforms commodify art.

Breaking Up with Big Streaming

“I recently read Liz Pelly’s book about the evolution of Spotify and that really sealed the deal for me,” he says, referring to the journalist’s 2025 book, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, a critique of the streaming giant’s impact on musical culture. “Streaming is an amazing service for the listener, right? It’s amazing to be able to look up any song you want to listen to and hear it instantly, but it comes at such enormous cost.”

Hegerat is exploring alternatives like the Nina Protocol and Subvert, a music co-op launching this year. These platforms promise more equitable distribution models, though they lack Spotify’s massive reach.

“Capitalism forces us to” categorize music by genre, Hegerat observes. “You’re uploading your music on [digital music distributor] DistroKid or something and you have to pick from [the genre] the options that they’re giving you. So it wants us to funnel and commodify our art in very specific ways.”

Pandemic as Creative Catalyst

The pandemic accelerated these tensions while simultaneously transforming Hegerat’s creative process. Unable to rehearse with his bandmates, guitarists Patrick O’Reilly and Robyn Gray, plus bassist Mark Godfrey, he wrote most of Icterus II in isolation, trusting that the compositions would translate when they finally reconvened in the studio.

“I wrote the majority of the record without us ever having played any of that stuff together,” he recalls. The approach worked, but it represented a fundamental shift from his usual method of road-testing material before recording.

This adaptability reflects broader changes in how Canadian musicians are responding to economic pressures. While Hegerat notes that his millennial generation seems to be “waving the white flag a little bit,” he’s encouraged by younger artists embracing DIY approaches and creating their own venues and opportunities.

Canadian Artists in a Global Economy

The regional dimension of these challenges particularly resonates given Canada’s position in the global music economy. Despite stef.in’s growing international recognition, including coverage in outlets like RetroFuturista, the band has never toured the United States, partly due to logistical challenges and reflecting a certain wariness about American cultural dominance.

“We’ll see in the current climate. I’m not sure if we’ll be there anytime soon,” Hegerat says about potential U.S. dates, laughing when I referred to America as “the eleventh province.”

His focus remains on building sustainable creative communities closer to home. The band’s preference for “grungier clubs” over traditional listening rooms reflects a desire to connect with audiences seeking authentic, uncompromising art rather than background music.

The Long Game of Artistic Persistence

Hegerat’s story traces a familiar arc for Canadian musicians of his generation: classical training (he studied jazz at university), early rock influences (John Bonham remains a hero), and gradual expansion into experimental territories. His path also illuminates larger questions about artistic survival when the economy increasingly views creativity as luxury rather than necessity.

The name “Icterus” refers to the bird family that includes Baltimore orioles, hinting at Hegerat’s broader interests beyond music. His fandom for the struggling baseball team serves as apt metaphor for his own artistic persistence despite long odds.

“Unfortunately, this is actually a really dark time to be one,” he said during our interview in early May, “but I’m a fan of the Baltimore Orioles. And they’re having a horrendous start.” The team’s 19-34 record as of this writing in late May has confirmed his assessment.

Like his beloved team, Hegerat keeps showing up, keeps creating, keeps fighting for space in an increasingly hostile environment. Icterus II shows what’s possible when artists refuse to compromise their vision, even when the systems around them seem designed to force exactly that compromise.

When streaming algorithms reward conformity and rising costs push out non-commercial art, Stefan Hegerat represents something increasingly rare: an artist committed to complexity, community, and the radical act of imagining alternatives. His music doesn’t offer easy answers, but it does something perhaps more valuable. It insists that the questions themselves are worth asking, worth exploring, worth the fight to keep alive.

“I’m just lucky to have so much music making in my life.” And in 2025, that might be the most radical statement of all.

Stefan Hegerat’s Icterus II is available through Barnyard Records and alternative streaming platforms. stef.in tours throughout Ontario and Quebec, with upcoming dates in Montreal and Toronto.