Article content Tim Brady dreams outside the box — way outside. The free-spirited Montreal composer/guitarist simply wants to round up another 99 guitarists to join up with him for the world première of his latest work, La Grande Accélération: Symphony #12, March 1 at ..
. St. Joseph’s Oratory! The guitarists will be joined by six percussionists, six conductors and two symphony orchestras — the Orchestre symphonique des jeunes de la Montérégie and the West Island Youth Symphony Orchestra — for this 45-minute concert, which will be held in conjunction with the Montreal/New Musics Festival.
Holy cacophony! Brady concedes his guitar won’t be gently weeping due to loneliness in March. But this is not his first foray in bringing guitars together — electric ones at that — to create sound waves in concert spaces. It is but the latest venture for Brady’s Instruments of Happiness collective.
It will certainly be his most ambitious, and likely his most audacious. And — dare we speculate — it may be loud enough to wake up the dearly departed resting nearby on the slopes of Mount Royal. Brady will be holding auditions Saturday at Concordia University’s John Molson Building for the 99 other players.
The tryouts are open to guitarists of all backgrounds, all ages and all genres. Applicants must have a skill level of advanced beginner or higher, but aren’t required to read music. However, they are required to have their own electric guitar.
“The most important thing is they be passionate about music and playing live,” notes Brady, who is a guitar teacher at Concordia when not strumming or composing scores. When he talks about wanting passionate guitarists from all genres, some might conjure would-be Carlos Santanas and Jimi Hendrixes waging riff wars with would-be B.B.
Kings and George Bensons in a decibel-heavy onslaught. Brady harbours no such fears based on past experiences. “We’ve never had those issues before, nor do I anticipate any now.
“Even though most of the guitarists I’ve worked with in this kind of format have come from different ages and backgrounds and esthetics, we all have this bond and camaraderie of loving the electric guitar. And once we’re all in the same room and working on the same piece of music, it’s impressive how we all pull together and create a sense of community,” says Brady, who in addition to playing guitar will be the “master conductor” conducting the conductors. His guitar troupes have included performers as young as 11 and up to the late 70s.
“The guitarists do require a basic skill, though not necessarily a high degree of technical competence. Nor is it required they’ve been playing for very long. The guitar music, for the most part, is relatively simple, while the percussion music is a little more complex and the orchestral music is even more complex.
But it’s really a unique experience for guitarists, who almost never get to play in orchestras,” Brady says, adding: “And then there’s the joy of just hanging out with 99 other guitarists.” Brady insists St. Joseph’s Oratory has no concerns about holding the concert in its sanctified space.
“They’re actually very open to collaboration. We’ve worked together in the past. They have one of the few places in Montreal where you can put 175 musicians together in one space.
We’re not on a stage together for this. We surround the patrons, with musicians on the side, in front and behind,” he says. “We’re serving up a form of surround sound.
” La Grande Accélération is not exactly a theological work. “It has two themes,” Brady says. “One is very simple, with the piece starting slowly and then really accelerating.
The other theme relates to historians describing the period from 1950 to 1980 as a rapid evolution of how the West transformed radically. But I have a suspicion that with the arrival of AI, we’re in for another big acceleration. So best we just buckle our seat belts.
“This is a symphony dealing with social questions. I don’t presume to provide answers. I just ask questions.
” A symphony with social commentary is not much of a stretch for Brady. Some might recall that he scored the music for Backstage at Carnegie Hall, which played the Centaur Theatre in 2022. An opera about racism with emphasis on the electric guitar, it revolved around acclaimed jazz guitarist Charlie Christian and was set in 1939 at Carnegie Hall, where Christian was minutes away from performing with the Benny Goodman Sextet when he was suddenly beset with an anxiety attack.
Brady has also worked on operas dealing with everything from the 1970 October Crisis to global climate change to the colonization of Mars. “My tastes may not be traditional, but I can find beauty in all sounds and in all subjects.” AT A GLANCE Guitar auditions for La Grande Accélération are held Saturday, Sept.
21 from 1 to 4 p.m. at Concordia University’s John Molson Building, 1450 Guy St.
, in Rooms 8.135 and 8.340.
Applicants must bring their own electric guitar. For more information, contact Nicholas Ryan at [email protected] .
[email protected].
