A website has been launched that provides an audio, visual, and text-based experience of the Hearing-Visions-Sonores exhibit currently on display at McGill University, Montreal. Hearing-Visions-Sonores is multimedia exhibit of graphic scores from nine contemporary Quebec-based composers who incorporate both notation and improvisation into their musical works, or question the dichotomy altogether.

The exhibit features nine of the many Québec-based composers who choose to employ this compositional practice: Sandeep Bhagwati, Brian Cherney, Andrew Culver, Jean Derome, Lori Freedman, Malcolm Goldstein, Joane Hétu, Robert M. Lepage and Danielle Palardy Roger.

For each composer the exhibit presents biographical information, a display of example scores, text concerning each score, and a video interview with the composer, including musical examples of the scores on display. In the future this website will contain further information concerning these composers and their work, and will expand to consider a greater collection of composers.

Under the overall management of ICASP (Improvisation, Community and Social Practice, a SSHRC MCRI centered at the University of Guelph), and in partnership with the Daniel Langlois Foundation, McGill University Library, and the McGill University Schulich School of Music, the Hearing-Visions-Sonores exhibit marks the progress of one research component of ICASP, namely to collect, catalogue, archive, and make publicly available, the “graphic scores” of composers who foreground improvisation in their musical works.

A companion exhibit that will include the work of composers Germaine Liu, Joe Sorbara, Jesse Stewart, and Scott Thomson and multi-media artist Nick Loess (who works in partnership with Lii) with links to the music scene in Guelph, Ont., will be presented in September at the University of Guelph, to coincide with the Guelph Jazz Festival and Colloquium.

ICASP focuses on student-lead research, and this project was designed, and implemented by a group of McGill-based student/scholars. This exhibit is created by:
Hélène Laurin, Project Director
Meghan L. Dzyak, Project Assistant Director
Marielle Andrée Groven, Musicology Assistant
Yvan Tétreault, Layout and Graphic Arts Assistant
Andrew Hankinson, Website Coordinator
Video shooting and editing was done by Patrick Andrew Boivin, an independent video consultant. Project oversight and implementation was provided by Cynthia Leive, Director of the Marvin Duchow Music Library, and Professor Eric Lewis, McGill Coordinator, ICASP.

Exhibit biographical texts were written by Meghan L. Dzyak. Explanatory texts were written by Marielle Andrée Groven, with assistance by Hélène Laurin. Translations were provided by Hélène Laurin, with assistance by Martine Rhéaume.