The Quebec Contemporary Music Society, or La Société de musique contemporaine du Québec in French (SMCQ), is a contemporary classical-music organization based in Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

, Quebec

Quebec

Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

. It was founded in 1966 by Montreal composers and musicians, including Wilfrid Pelletier

Wilfrid Pelletier

Joseph Louis Wilfrid Pelletier , CC was a Canadian conductor, pianist, composer, and arts administrator. He was instrumental in establishing the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, serving as the orchestra's first artistic director and conductor from 1935-1941...

, Jean Papineau-Couture

Jean Papineau-Couture

Jean Papineau-Couture, was a Canadian composer and academic.Born in Montreal, Papineau-Couture is the grandson of conductor and composer Guillaume Couture. As a child he studied piano with his mother...

, Hugh Davidson

Hugh Davidson (composer)

Hugh Hanson Davidson is a Canadian composer, music critic, radio producer, writer, and arts administrator. His compositional output includes works for piano, ballets, chamber music, vocal art songs, choral works, and incidental music for the theatre.Davidson is a graduate of The Royal Conservatory...

, Serge Garant

Serge Garant

Serge Garant, OC was a Canadian composer, conductor, professor of music at the University of Montreal and radio host of Musique de notre siècle on Radio-Canada. In 1966 he cofounded with Jean Papineau-Couture, Maryvonne Kendergi, Wilfrid Pelletier and Hugh Davidson the Société de musique...

, and Maryvonne Kendergian

Maryvonne Kendergian

Maryvonne Kendergi or Kendergian, was a Canadian writer, professor, musicologist, pianist, and Québécois commentator. She grew up in Syria, then moved to France where she studied and gained an advanced degree from the Sorbonne in 1942...

.

The SMCQ presents an annual series of concerts involving its own ensemble as well as invited guests, the biennial Montreal/New Music International Festival, and a youth program called SMCQ Jeunesse (SMCQ Youth). The 2007-08 season marked the inaugural of an Homage Series, planned to be a biennial collaborative event featuring the music of an important Quebec composer, which that season was Claude Vivier

Claude Vivier

-Biography:Born to unknown parents in Montreal, Vivier was adopted at the age of three by a poor French-Canadian family. From the age of thirteen, he attended boarding schools run by the Marist Brothers, a religious order that prepared young boys for a vocation in the priesthood. At the age of...

. The SMCQ's artistic director since 1988 has been Walter Boudreau

Walter Boudreau

Walter Boudreau is a Québécois composer, saxophonist and conductor. In 1969, he founded the group L'Infonie with Raoul Duguay, which dissolved in 1973. Since 1988, he has been the artistic director of the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec in Montreal...

.

Artistic Directors

• 1966-1986 : Serge Garant
  Serge Garant
  Serge Garant, OC was a Canadian composer, conductor, professor of music at the University of Montreal and radio host of Musique de notre siècle on Radio-Canada. In 1966 he cofounded with Jean Papineau-Couture, Maryvonne Kendergi, Wilfrid Pelletier and Hugh Davidson the Société de musique...
  
  
• 1986-1988 : Gilles Tremblay
  Gilles Tremblay
  Gilles Tremblay, is a Canadian composer. He studied at the Conservatories of Montreal and Paris , where his teachers including Olivier Messiaen , Yvonne Loriod , and Maurice Martenot . He also attended Stockhausen's summer courses at Darmstadt, where he became interested in electro-acoustic...
  
  
• 1988-… : Walter Boudreau
  Walter Boudreau
  Walter Boudreau is a Québécois composer, saxophonist and conductor. In 1969, he founded the group L'Infonie with Raoul Duguay, which dissolved in 1973. Since 1988, he has been the artistic director of the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec in Montreal...
  
  

Montreal/New Music International Festival

The first Montreal/New Music International Festival was produced in 2005 and featured the music of more than 50 composers, including Cornelis de Bondt

Cornelis de Bondt

Cornelis de Bondt is a Dutch composer. Born in The Hague, de Bondt attended the Royal Conservatory there and currently teaches composition and music theory at the same institution.-References:...

, R. Murray Schafer

R. Murray Schafer

Raymond Murray Schafer is a Canadian composer, writer, music educator and environmentalist perhaps best known for his World Soundscape Project, concern for acoustic ecology, and his book The Tuning of the World...

, and Michel Longtin

Michel Longtin

Michel Longtin is a Canadian composer and music educator. An associate of the Canadian Music Centre and a member of the Canadian League of Composers, he won the Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music in 1986 for Pohjatuuli....

. It included performances by the Hilliard Ensemble

Hilliard Ensemble

The Hilliard Ensemble is a British male vocal quartet originally devoted to the performance of early music. Founded in 1974, the group is named after the Elizabethan miniaturist painter Nicholas Hilliard....

, Klangforum Wein and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal. The format of the festival included a week of concerts, lectures, master classes, and public rehearsals with composers.

External links

• Official site
• Official site of Montreal/New Music International Festival