Open House at the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal's New Maison Symphonique

This past September 8, I had the pleasure of performing with Erreur de Type 27 for the opening of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal's new symphony hall, named the Maison Symphonique de Montréal. The new hall, at Place des Arts, is a major new concert hall for Montreal. The OSM invited groups from across Quebec to come and perform for their open house event. The trio was made up of Marie-Hélène Breault on flute, Catherine Meunier on marimba and vibraphone, and myself on tabla. (Marie-Hélène and Catherine also played on my upcoming CD, Cycles!) We presented excerpts from our upcoming Musica Masala show on October 14.

Erreur de Type 27 performing at the Maison Symphonique open house

The open house ended up being a huge success - there were literally thousands of people who lined up to see the new hall. You can see some of the loooong lineups in the OSM's Facebook photos. Over the course of the day, we performed four times; three times in the main foyer, and once in the new hall. The new hall looks great. I can't really comment on the sound, as I wasn't in the audience, but we received very good feedback after our performance. We performed Christien Ledroit's Elementalities, for flute, vibraphone, and tabla; Jim Hiscott's Shadow Play for flute and tabla; and Payton MacDonald's Farmaishi in a special arrangement for flute, marimba, and tabla.

A fun fact: I used Maestro Kent Nagano's podium for my riser. It's made of very heavy hardwood (oak?) and weighs about 200 pounds! Unfortunately, no riser was available in the foyer...

Performing in the foyer.

Thanks to composer Christien Ledroit for the photos!