Stretching the unison

Stretching the unison, 4 September 2024, at the PHI Foundation, Montreal.

Stretching the unison is a music project that explores the limits of unison and sets
musical performance within a wider field of attentiveness and conceptual practices.
Four reed-playing instrumentalists perform compositions that ask them to push
and pull on the limits of togetherness, relying on their intuition to navigate the
ensemble’s common time feel. The musicians face each other in the center of the
space and focus on tonal blend in shifting waves of rhythmic complexity, playing on
subtle differences as they seek unison. Unanchored to metric time, the ensemble
seems to perform melodic unison along with a sensation of group listening that is
as cohesive as it is vulnerable. The result is a performance in which the audience,
seated around the circle of musicians, becomes witness to a musical process,
interpellated by the common activity of listening. The conceptual approach invites
the listener to reckon with the way that they are also called to attention in the
open field of listening, time and intuitive play.

Conceived by Adam Kinner on the invitation of Victoria Carrasco, curator of
performance at the PHI Foundation.

Performers:
Erin Hill – pump organ
Adam Kinner – saxophone and clarinet
Naomi McCarroll-Butler – clarinets and flutes
Frédérique Roy – accordion