Article

EMIM

Published Online February 7, 2006

Last Edited December 16, 2013

EMIM (Ensemble de musique improvisée de Montréal). Informal association 1978-85 of free-improvising and jazz musicians. Although EMIM was incorporated in 1982, its membership was simply a matter of philosophical kinship.

EMIM

EMIM (Ensemble de musique improvisée de Montréal). Informal association 1978-85 of free-improvising and jazz musicians. Although EMIM was incorporated in 1982, its membership was simply a matter of philosophical kinship. As articulated by one of EMIM's founders, Jean Derome, 'If someone wants to be in EMIM, he is in EMIM' (quoted in Boogie, Pete & the Senator). Other founders were the saxophonist Robert Leriche, the pianist Pierre St-Jacques (later known as St-Jak) and the bassist Claude Simard. The guitarist René Lussier was also central to many EMIM groups.

Several hundred concerts involving some 70 different musicians were mounted in Montreal cafés, bars, galleries, and schools (eg, the Grande Passe, the UQAM, the Musée des Beaux Arts, Foufounes Éléctriques) under the EMIM banner. Among them: an adapatation in 1980 by Derome of Racine's Phèdre - Phèdre, sans paroles - for improvisers, and a production in 1981 of André Duchesne's musical Clockville. Some EMIM presentations mixed music and dance - eg, 1983-6, the Événements de la pleine lune. EMIM musicians and groups also performed at the FIJM and Festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville, travelled widely in Quebec, appeared in Ontario and, in 1983, toured in France.

Among the groups affiliated with EMIM were Nébu, l'Enmieux, the Pouet-Pouet Band, the Chick-Boom Chick Band, la G.U.M. (Graffiti Urbain Musical or Grande Urchestre de Montréal), Jonas, Hot Zizanie, la Grande aventure, Mystérioso, Éboulements, St-Jak/Vendette, St-Jak Workshop Non/Stop, and I Like Jazz. A quartet (Leriche, Simard, the pianist Jean Beaudet and the drummer Mathieu Léger) recorded the LP Danses (Cadence CAD-1006) under the EMIM name in 1979.

EMIM was restructured on a more formal basis in 1985 as the Association pour la diffusion de musiques ouvertes (ADMO) by Derome, St-Jacques, Lussier, Pierre Cartier, Yves Charuest, André Duchesne, Robert M. Lepage, Michel Ratté, and others. As an early effort, ADMO mounted No Man's Land, a small, parallel festival to the 1986 FIJM. In subsequent years, however, the record company Ambiances Magnétiques became the focus of many of these same musicians' activities, and ADMO was inactive by 1990.