For the 15th edition of Art Souterrain, the MAC presents solo percussion concert by Stuart Jackson. Experience a one-of-a-kind multisensory music, sound and video event, presented in the MAC’s exhibition space at Place Ville Marie.

See the program

Percussionist Stuart Jackson who appears in Nelson Henricks four-channel video installation Heads Will Roll, will perform works chosen to expand and complement the percussion content of Henricks’s video piece, which features the sound of drums muted by books, cooking pots, frying pans, and other household objects. There is a rich tradition in the history of percussion composition of making music with found materials. The program includes Bone Alphabet (1992), by Brian Ferneyhough, and Psappha (1975), by Iannis Xenakis, both of which provide rough guidelines for instrumentation and require that the percussionist find or make instruments from materials such as wood, metal, ceramic, and glass.

Also on the program is Composed Improvisation for One-sided Drums (1990) by John Cage, which, although played on a traditional instrument, invites the possibility of radical interpretation by requiring a wide variety of sticks and mallets. In his performance, Jackson approaches the instrument using friction, as opposed to hitting, and employs exclusively nontraditional playing implements such as metal dowels, Styrofoam cups, and springs to explore tangential acoustic possibilities. Finally, selected movements from Dust (2018), by Rebecca Saunders, will be presented; this more recent composition generously offers ideas for exploring the unique sound qualities in metal, particularly aluminum.

Throughout the concert, short improvisational interludes from Heads Will Roll will be played back through drivers and processed with physical materials such as metal plates and muted drums. Henricks will provide customized video projections for Jackson’s concert.

Schedule

April 05, 2023, 6 p.m.
MAC at Place Ville Marie, gallery level
Admission free with a ticket to view the exhibition

Biography

Stuart Jackson’s a percussionist and uilleann piper from Virginia, now based in Montreal, QC, Canada. Before moving to Montreal to start his doctorate, he was living in New York City, where he was a traditional music instructor at the Irish Arts Center in Manhattan and taught percussion at the Kaufman Music Center. Like most interpreters of new music, he has premiered many works from living composers, but specializes in rethinking approaches to the realization of existing works for percussion from the 20th century and reviving those that have been lost or forgotten.

He has performed at venues such as Roulette and Pionner Works in Brooklyn, NY; the King’s Theatre in Glasgow, Scotland; Harvestworks in New York; Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT; SBC Gallery in Montréal; Salle Claude-Champagne de l’Université de Montréal; and countless others. He has also performed in film and theatre settings, working with the Soho Rep Theatre in New York and the Wordless Music Orchestra. 

He is currently pursuing a doctorate in percussion performance at McGill University in Montréal, where he studies with Fabrice Marandola.