Detroit’s Wolf Eyes and Toronto’s Canadian Creative Music Collective (CCMC) played the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) on May 21 to launch the 19th annual Media City Film Festival across the border in Windsor. The night also served as a launch party for the limited edition vinyl reissue of the 1978 CCMC Volume Three, a lost recording made available as a limited edition pressing of 500 copies after 35 years.
In attendance performing as CCMC were Al Mattes, John Oswald and Michael Snow.
From Media City’s Film Festival Guide:
CCMC (Canadian Creative Music Collective) formed in 1974 as “a composing ensemble united by a desire to play music that is fluid, spontaneous, and self-regulating”. From 1976-80, CCMC released six vinyl LPs through Toronto’s Music Gallery. In 2002 Art Metropole released a 2 CD set featuring CCMC’s collaborative performances with Christian Marclay at the No Music Fesitval and the Rivoli in New York. Widely regarded as one of the pioneering free improvisation bands of the 1970s, CCMC has been reinventing itself with a shifting constellation of artists and a consistent questing spirit for more than four decades. Guest musicians have included Derek Bailey, Malcolm Goldstein, Evan Parker, Eugene Chadborne, Phil Minton, Misha Megelberg and many others.
In 1975 Al Mattes founded the Music Gallery in Toronto and was its Executive and Artistic Director from 1975-87. He was Artistic Director of the Inter-Arts Department of the Banff Centre for the Arts, Director of the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre, a founding member of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community and organizer of the Journees Electro Radio Days festival. JERD was the first Canada-wide radio festival, linking cities by broadband telephone in live-to-air performances.
John Oswald is a Governor General’s Award Media Arts Laureate, Ars Electronica Digital Musics and United Arts Award winner, and an inductee to the CBC Alternative Walk of Fame. His multifaceted sonic clock, A Time To Hear for Here, is a permanent environment at the Royal Ontario Museum. In 2012 the Ensemble Modern Frankfurt premiered his composition b9, a condensation of all nine Beethoven symphonies.
The art of Michal Snow is in the permanent collections of museums including the MoMA New York, the Museum Ludwig (Cologne) and the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris). He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (1972), the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal (2002), an honorary doctorate from the Universite de Paris Pantheon-Sorbonne (2004) and the Gershon Iskowitz Prize (2011). He was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 2007.
Photos from the evening…
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