Festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville

Festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville

Festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville. Established in 1983 in Victoriaville, 170 km east of Montreal, by Production Platforme, Inc, under the artistic direction of Michel Levasseur. In the festival's first year 10 concerts were presented between 1 and 4 December. Artists included the Canadians Carbone 14, Mara (with the Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos), Montréal Transport Ltée, the MSO, and Karen Young and Michel Donato, as well as Fred Frith (Great Britain) and Tom Cora (USA).

Held in following years in early October, the FIMAV has employed as its venues the local recreation centre (renamed the Grand Café for the occasion), the Église Ste-Victoire, and various hotel and school halls. Beginning in 1985 the programming took an increasingly international direction and by 1990, when 24 concerts were given by musicians from 12 countries, the FIMAV was regarded as one of the leading events of its kind in the world. Attendance reached 5000 in the late 1980s.

The festival has defined 'musique actuelle' in the broadest possible terms, the range of its programming exemplified by the rock bands The Box (1984) and Madame (1986) on one hand, and the chamber ensembles I Musici de Montréal (1985) and Terra Australis (1988) on the other. Music of an improvised nature has been central to the festival. Artists to appear more than once during the 1980s at the festival include the Canadians Tim Brady, Lise Daoust, Jean Derome, André Duchesne, Denis Hébert, Jean-Denis Levasseur, Robert M. Lepage, René Lussier, and Bill Smith, the US musicians Anthony Braxton, Marilyn Crispell, Roscoe Mitchell, David Moss, Rova Saxophone Quartet, Elliott Sharp, Cecil Taylor, and John Zorn, and England's Frith and Derek Bailey.

The FIMAV established its own Victo label in 1987 with the release of Nous Autres by Frith and Lussier. Victo had issued 13 albums by 1991, 11 of festival performances originally recorded for broadcast by the CBC, including those of Braxton with Bailey, a Braxton ensemble, Crispell (solo and quintet), Duchesne, Heiner Goebbels and Alfred 23 Harth (Germany), Barre Phillips (France), Slawterhaus (Germany/Australia), and Richard Teitelbaum (USA) with Carlos Zingaro (Portugal). Derome and Mitchell have made studio recordings for Victo.