Components of composing

At McGill’s CIRMMT musical inventors write the music, build the instruments and rig the acoustics… McGill’s New Music Building on Sherbrooke St. W. is surprisingly full of computers, microphones and speakers, robot ears and robot mouths. This hoard belongs to the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT, or Kermit to friends), and it’s scattered through the building like upsetting x-ray results. Kermit is a research group with members from McGill, Université de Montréal, and Université de Sherbrooke who play scientific sisters to the floppy-haired and excitable performing brothers next door. But Kermit has concerts, too; they are just infrequent and quietly publicized. The next one is Thursday, and it is part of the live@CIRMMT series, which is a small peninsula on the geeky land of electroacoustic happenings at Casa del Popolo or the Elektra, Montreal/New Music and Akousma festivals. Akousma co-produces a series called Electrochocs with the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal and their next concert, featuring Jean-François Laporte, is somehow the same evening.