Sweet Tooth

An exploration of the saccharine and the superficial

Ensemble contemporain de Montréal (ECM+)
Véronique Lacroix, cond.
Jeff Stonehouse, flutes
Martin Gauvreau, clarinets
Antoine St-Onge , bassoon,
Laurence Latreille-Gagné, French horn
Olivier Maranda, percussion,
Hubert Brizard + Geneviève Liboiron , violins
Valérie Arsenault, viola
Chloé Dominguez, cello

Sunday November 11, 2018
The Music Gallery, Toronto, Canada

Premiere Cast

“[…] indeed one heck of an act which reintroduces a lost dimension in musical creation: humour.”
Le Devoir, Christophe Huss, 02.11.18
“For Tidrow, emojis and likes constitute the social sugar which our generation gorges on until it reaches a morbid saturation. […] [Sweet Tooth] is made up of an amalgam of clichés that are linked together, forming a roller coaster of manufactured emotions. […] The image that Tidrow offers is clear: a child overdosing on sugar whose smile slowly warps into a monstrous grin.”
VOIR, Pierre-Luc Sénécal, 3.11.18

Just like every good western millennial, the first thing I learned to do was to consume and want more. Sugar in this piece is exemplary of the nefarious yet completely socially accepted poison of consumerism, which also ties into the dual nature of the sweet tooth: sweets make us smile because of their sugar and their often oh-so-cute presentation and depiction, but they also rot our teeth, and in a most insidious fashion! What a beautiful metaphor for happy consumer capitalism …

In this post-truth moment, image is everything: candy is food and advertisements depict real life. A major chord means happy emoji, a minor chord means sad emoji. How does this affect our grasp of deeper connection with art? I wanted to play with these codes and clichés and to see how I could harvest their energy to highlight the violence hidden behind each major chord.

ECM+ Tour, Véronique Lacroix, cond., Canada
2018
Fl, Cl, Bsn, Hn, Perc, 2 Vln, Vla, Vlc
12 min
Composer
Compositeur
Komponist

Sweet Tooth

ECM+ Tour, Véronique Lacroix, cond., Canada
2018
Fl, Cl, Bsn, Hn, Perc, 2 Vln, Vla, Vlc
12 min
An exploration of the saccharine and the superficial