The Constantinople Ensemble to Perform Concert CLAIR-OBSCUR Alongside A Filetta

For its 20th season, the Constantinople Ensemble is presenting a series of concerts in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' Bourgie Hall

By: Dec. 04, 2021
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The Constantinople Ensemble to Perform Concert CLAIR-OBSCUR Alongside A Filetta

The Constantinople Ensemble will be presenting the concert Clair-obscur on December 11th together with the singers of A Filetta's polyphonic ensemble.

For its 20th season, the Constantinople Ensemble is presenting a series of concerts in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' Bourgie Hall featuring the talents of both new collaborators and long-time friends.

"Over the past 20 years, Constantinople has collaborated with 112 artists from various traditions. It is in Montreal, as part of our season, with the precious presence of our local audience, that most of our creations were born, before travelling the world. Their DNA carries this place and this environment, which is conducive to exchanges and to crossing borders, which is Montreal."- Kiya Tabassian, Artistic Director of Constantinople

The third show of this six-part series will be presented in partnership with the Corsican choir A Filetta.

Clair-obscur is one of the Constantinople's latest creations. Born out of two pre-pandemic residencies in Corsica, the concert truly came together in September 2020, during Constantinople's last trip to Calvi to work with A Filetta. Between the sea and the mountains, between modality and polyphony, Clair-obscur is the result of a desire for an intimate exchange between Constantinople's musicians and A Filetta's renowned singers. A poetic and musical suite was thus conceived by interweaving the polyphonies created by A Filetta's erudite singers with Kiya Tabassian's compositions and direction. A deeply moving concert.

The show will also be touring across Canada, with performances in Vancouver on December 3rd, Maple Ridge on December 4th, Victoria on December 5th, Toronto on December 10th, and Quebec City on December 13th.

For over four decades, A Filetta has been one of the leading groups in Corsican polyphonic singing. Featuring six male voices, this choir of unprecedented creativity perpetuates the island's oral tradition while also engaging in the creation of more contemporary works. Refusing to be the guardians of any temple, these singers instead develop through their compositions the idea of a prolonged, renewed, and open tradition that takes root in the memory but develops without restraint. Through their creations they strive to consolidate and expand upon the polyphonic art, which in 2009 was declared a vital part of humanity's immaterial cultural heritage and is one of the pillars of Corsican culture's identity.

Borrowing its name from the ancient city that once was a beacon of light between East and West, Constantinople was conceived as a space for musical fusions and exchanges by its artistic director Kiya Tabassian from the moment it was founded in Montreal in 2001. Since its inception, the ensemble has released 19 albums on labels such as Analekta, Atma, World Village, Buda Musique, Ma Case, Dreyer Gaido and Glossa. Over the past ten years, the ensemble has developed nearly 50 creations that presented in more than 240 cities across 54 countries.


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