Two girls on a quest to change classical music forever...

The culmination of two years of existential hopes and woes brought us to Eastern Québec, specifically beautiful Domaine Forget, where we just spent a week recording our debut disc for ATMA classique.

Rehearsal upstage POV

The instruments tuning for our first recording day

DAY I

Traffic. Pick Joanne up from airport. Traffic. Drive Five Hours Through Beautiful Countryside. Arrive to Domaine Forget!! Rehearse as much as we can into the evening without getting too tired for the week ahead. We were joined by our composer and collaborator Airat Ichmouratov who will be playing clarinet and duduk on the album on his own composition.

We were immediately excited to be in the hall, Domaine Forget is an incredibly amazing space for chamber music. Vanessa may have teared up. It was a great start to the week!

DAY II

We started off the session with our collaborative pianist Joanne Kang on Airat Ichmouratov’s newly commissioned four movement work entitled “quatrains of wisdom” featuring the composer on duduk and clarinet. The duduk is an instrument much older than us, but just as wild and unruly. We finished off the evening with a few glasses of nikolaschka, an eccentric Russian specialty for which airat educated us on the history.

We actually have no photos from inside the recording from the 2nd day as it was an 8 hour (!!!) session and we were extremely #focused so this is from Vanessa's morning walk of the grounds

DAY III

the next day begun afresh on Luna Pearl Woolf’s amazing work “Rumi: Quatrains of Love” written in 2012 for voice, cello, and piano.

Since we were in a romantic mood afterwards (understandably) we finished off the day with Jeffrey Fong’s new work "Dans un sentier tout parfumé”, exploring first love and budding passions in the scandalous medieval French poem Roman de la Rose. We also added his brand new second movement about danger, fear, and shame (in love, of course).

This was hour 6 in the studio. The coffee machine backstage sponsored this photo.

DAY IV

The next day we were exhausted; tears had been shed, but we were undefeated; we begun the day with a rejuvenating rendition of Maya Fridman's work; “Tree of life” (also inspired by Rumi!).

At this point Vanessa had sung five million high F’s, however, being immortal, this did not phase her. We moved on to our second commission, “Simone: Mythe Moderne"; a humorous anti-capitalist manifesto by Laurence Jobidon with text by Thomas Royer. It is slightly reminiscent of an episode of severance?? Joanne was back in the studio for this on the keys. (Does it make us sound cool and casual if we refer to classical piano as "the keys"? let us know in the comments below)

Running into the St. Lawrence to seal the project with salt water - it was freezing cold and beautiful

DAY V

THE LAST DAY began with a piece in Swedish (hej!!!) by Anders Hillborg originally written for violin and mezzo; Sahara may not have an E string however she considers the cello to be a better match for the human voice (she may be biased). And then we continued on to a new work entitled “Urbexcelsis" by Nicole Lizee for duo and electronics. Our set up featured a pipe, thimbles, large chain, a bucket, a power drill, and more. We have yet to ask Nicole if she was inspired by Montreal’s construction culture during her creative process, but we surely were. Upon completing this thrilling finale, we plunged ourselves into the cold waters of the Saint Lawrence River inlet at midnight; a fitting baptism to declare our war against the classical music establishment— a war for which we are greatly outnumbered, but for which the prize is ineffable and not clearly defined.

Some additional more photos of the last day have been added below to better articulate the vibes: Vanessa as soon as she heard "we've got it" (for the last take) and Sahara and her pipe (you'll need to listen to the Lizée piece to figure out what happens with this...)

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So In Total

We recorded

8 works.

3 already-existing and 5 new commissions written for us.

The album will feature one piece for voice/cello/piano/clarinet quartet set over 4 movements, two pieces for voice/cello/piano trio, and 5 for étrange only.

It's. very. exciting!!!

The result is a wild mix of different contemporary genres of classical music that will hopefully blow your mind and change everything about what you think vocal chamber music can be, and how many notes a cello can play at once. 

Our hearts overflow with gratitude; for each other, for finding a musical partnership for which we can plunge ourselves into head first; for our composers (for being our other halves in this project), for our musical collaborators (we ♥️ you Jo) and for Anne Marie Sylvestre from ATMA Classique for believing in us and being a virtuoso in the studio. Last but not least, thank you to the Canada Council for the Arts and the Canadian government for supporting the creation of this album and new music in Canada, for without it we would be lost. Thank you for all of our friends, family, and supporters for helping making this project possible. Vanessa's amazing boyfriend Nick for lending us his blue subaru to act as the étrange mobile, to our fabulous mécene and friend Joan Vogelesang, and to our agent Jean-Frédéric Caron for being our cheerleader from day 1 of this project.

Photos from various iPhones and photographic stills by an unofficial band member and absolute MVP Huei Lin; video to come. 

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XoXo 💋

Duo Étrange

PS okay and here is Vanessa....working with tools.

You're going to come see us at Bourgie to figure out what is going on with this.

this post was co-written by Sahara and Vanessa... if you can't tell