Casse-Tête: A Festival of Experimental Music
Philosophy and Approach
The central principle of Casse-Tête’s programming is to provide artists, as much as possible, with the opportunity to create and share the music they most want to make, but which they may not get an opportunity to make anywhere else. It is to offer an eccentric and generous context, one oriented as much as possible away from the centres of institutional power, influence, and commercialism, and toward the immediacy of a shared moment. Following from this principle, the festival also offers unique opportunities for audiences to experience music they may never otherwise hear.
“Casse-Tête” is the French word for a puzzle, but it can also refer to a headache or a deafening noise. It was adopted to signify the desire to stimulate thought and playful exploration, as well as to gently kid about the limits of accessibility in aesthetically challenging music. The word “experimental,” meanwhile, serves to point to positively valuing uncertainty—not knowing in advance what will happen: what will this music be? Will it work? What will the event itself be like? Because Casse-Tête invites audiences and artists to be open to something new and unknown, it must also be committed to being as welcoming and hospitable as possible, and to continually expanding its capacity for those possibilities.
In more predictable and familiar musical contexts, whether that be for classical music performed in a concert hall, rock music performed in an arena, or dance music performed in a nightclub, a set of social protocols govern how the music is heard. Is it acceptable to talk over the music, to applaud between movements? At Casse-Tête, a casual, inclusive environment can mean that chamber music is heard over the sounds of children playing on the lawn just outside the open door, or that ambient music is heard in an environment in which it is not just part of the atmosphere, but the focus of audience attention. This approach to listening together is informed by a stance like that in DIY punk and anarchist spaces, filtered through the sensibility of artist-run centres and non-profit galleries. This is to say that audiences are invited to experience the music as art in a way that is, above all, exploratory.
The music itself has ranged from improvisation to new music, from noise rock to electroacoustic compositions, on to many other forms, including some for which there is perhaps no name. The music is not necessarily strongly tied to one musical tradition or set of practices, although it certainly can be that, too. It is, definitionally, art music, in that it is being offered as art.
Artists and audiences alike should have their horizons pleasantly broadened by sharing in something new and delightful. Serious listeners of free jazz might hear it immediately next to ambient field recordings, and hear those artists then perform together. The cross-pollination of various forms and traditions allows the festival to realize a critical mass of experimental practices in the community, and also to create the maximum number of possibilities by bringing together artists from different practices to foster new opportunities to listen, connect, and to collaborate. Nurturing the connections between artists by programming around the relationships that they want to make with other artists has also been a festival mainstay.
The Festival-Community as Tent
It is perhaps not too grandiose to suggest that the festival as a whole could be understood as a work of art, not only through how decisions in artistic direction influence artistic practices in the larger community, but in its institutionality. Consider that if a symphony orchestra society is conceived as a durable or even permanent institutional structure, something like the concert halls in which the music it produces is performed, Casse-Tête’s institutional structure could be thought of as something more like a tent. It’s a provisional structure and a model of institutional action that is light and mobile, involving the minimum amount of administration to deliver its purposes. Another way that the festival is like a tent is that it is intended to offer shelter to artists for a little while, socially, contextually, and practically. And once again, this should be true for the audience as well, since community as such is a matter of shelter. This is also reflected in the fact that all Casse-Tête events are free of charge to attend, physically accessible and safe, and welcoming for all ages.
History of the Festival
The first Casse-Tête: A Festival of Experimental Music in June 2013 in Prince George, British Columbia, Canada, on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation. The original festival consisted of four concerts held over two days. The venue was a museum and science centre called The Exploration Place, located in what was then called Fort George Park (now Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park). That same venue would serve as the main festival venue from 2014 to 2016, and then in 2017, the festival was held at Theatre Northwest. Every year after the first was supported by a grant from the City of Prince George, as well as a long list of local sponsors. In 2016, festival founder and Artistic Director Jeremy Stewart was awarded the inaugural Barbara Pentland Award for Extraordinary Contribution to Canadian Music by the Canadian Music Centre, Canada’s national advocacy body for composers, for his work with Casse-Tête.
Casse-Tête: A Festival of Experimental Music was revived in 2023 in Surrey and White Rock, on the Semiahmoo Peninsula, the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Semiahmoo, Katzie, and Kwantlen First Nations. Since that year, the festival has been held annually on the peninsula, and performances have taken place at the Historic Stewart Farm, the White Rock Community Centre, Sanford Lodge at Kwomais Point Park, and the Ocean Park Hall, among other venues. This revived festival has been sponsored by the City of Surrey through its Cultural Grants Program, the Canadian Music Centre, and has twice produced a co-programmed stage with the White Rock Jazz & Blues Festival.
The festival has typically involved four concerts per year, including a program specifically for children and families. It has offered site-specific performances, panel discussions, collective improvisations and more, and has once involved dropping a piano from the roof of a building.
Past performers have included Lori Goldston, Catherine Sikora, Susan Campos Fonseca, Stanley Jason Zappa, Jooklo Duo, Rodney Sharman, C. Diab, Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, Anju Singh, José Delgado Guevara, Darren Williams, Rebecca Bruton, Cathy Fern Lewis, Danielle Savage, Jonathon Wilcke, Christians, Stephen Carl O’Shea, and many, many others. In some years, a Casse-Tête Festival Ensemble has been convened under the direction of artists like Sebastian Ostertag and Olive Shakur, to perform music by such composers as Fredric Rzewski, Terry Riley, and Steve Reich. One-off events have occasionally happened between festivals, featuring artists such as Shearing Pinx and Tatsuya Nakatani.
Casse-Tête: A Festival of Experimental Music is a production of the Casse-Tête Institute Society.
Board of Directors
Jeremy Stewart, Chair, Artistic Director
Slavko Bucifal, Vice-chair, Treasurer
Stephen O’Shea, Secretary
Erin Arding, Director
Neil Lettinga, Director
Malcolm McColl, Director