Ensemble KORE:: Urban Wall

An event combining two great talents, and a rare opportunity
to hear the music of Berlin-based composer Stephan Winkler
in Montreal. Winkler is equally at home in the worlds of live instrumental music
and electro, and this event amalgamates live electronics with the virtuoso musicians
of Ensemble KORE: Mathieu Gaulin – saxophone, D’Arcy
Gray – percussion, Marc Couroux – piano, Isabelle
Bozzini – cello, and the voice of Marie-Annick Béliveau.
Frédéric Saint-Hilaire continues to pair up with
the most interesting artists on the international scene. His live video for
this show includes a remix of Jesko Marx’s original video for Winkler’s
Zigzag.

Stephan Winkler has written works for numerous
instrumentations including two pieces for large orchestra. His works often include
pre-produced soundtracks and video. While the roots of his musical thinking
certainly lie in the tradition of European art music, his interests go beyond
that and he is constantly seeking new ways of merging the complexity of concert
music with current forms of artistic communication. Stephan Winkler is the co-founder
of SKART, a group devoted to the development of new forms of audiovisual performances
that offer meaningful combinations of acoustic and visual art. Since its foundation
in 2000 SKART has issued five projects, including one at Germany’s Ministry
for Foreign Affairs, and another one at FIFA’s “Football Globe,”
a spherical building after plans by Buckminster Fuller. Winkler released his
first CD in 1998 with writer and performer Max Goldt and is currently working
on the production of Musik Für Gute Kopfhörer, a CD with lavish sound
productions of his works to be published by Wergo and on the chamber music cycle
Spielzeug, which is focussed on the search for a possible generation of musical
semantics rooting in transcribed phonetics of verbal speech samples.

Frédéric Saint-Hilaire, also
known as Cinetik, has participated actively in the Montreal electronic scene
since 1998. In 2000 and 2001, he presented his works at various events in England,
Belgium, Scotland and France, as well as in many of Montreal’s electronic
art festivals. The years 2002-2003 were a turning point in his journey. He created
the video projections that illuminated Frankfurt’s city centre during
the New Year’s festivities. He gave a performance at the launch of Chemical
Brothers’ “Come with Us” in Barcelona. He then produced a
60-minute experimental TV project that was broadcast in Germany on the VIVA
network. Other presentations of his works took place in Miami (Winter Music
Conference), in Brussels (Cimatics Festival) and in Paris during the Semaine
du cinéma du Québec. At the same time, he was also collaborating
with the Ensemble contemporain de Montréal as part of Unions libres II.
On the commercial level, BMW commissioned him to remix one of their ads. In
2004, he returned to Miami for a second performance at WMC while he was busy
thinking up a video for the DVD commemorating the 20th anniversary of Cirque
du Soleil which was released at the end of 2004. Saint-Hilaire presented an
improvised session along with musician Deadbeat during the MUTEK festival and
he created a video for the opera Elia at Salle Pierre-Mercure. In addition,
his works can be found on two video-music compilations released in the fall
of 2004: the new Epsilonlab DVD and the -40 DVD on the Cocosolidciti label in
partnership with the NFB and the Canada Council for the Arts.