What makes a jazz concert exciting? Piano quintets featuring vibraphones, Spanish-bebop fusion, and never-previously-released songs, obviously. Taking the hint, drummer, pianist, and McGill music professor André White will take to the Segal stage next week. With esteemed vibraphonist François Stevenson, guitarist Carlos Jimenez, bassist Alex Walkington, and drummer Dave Laing, The André White Quintet will present an eclectic array of music, composed entirely by White.

“You need to think how the textures are going to work. You don’t want it to be too dense,” White comments, referring to the combination of vibraphone, guitar, and piano— an exciting feature of his upcoming concert. “I like the challenge of working with those three instruments.”

White says his music is “firmly steeped in the bebop tradition,”  and he was surrounded by jazz while growing up. “That’s sort of [the] music that’s been pounded into my brain … to me, that really relates to all the music that comes after it, it’s not like you separate it.”

And he doesn’t.  Even when the music in question precedes bebop chronologically, White stays crafty. Inspired by the great 19th century Spanish composers Granados and Albéniz, he composed a special suite that “would refer to that period, that music.”

“[But] it’s still jazz music,” he reassures. “I’ve been trying to get the sound of that music and marry it to contemporary jazz.”

The “El Toro Suite” from his album El Toro is anything but a literal transcription from the Spanish originals.

“[I’m] working on it from the perspective of a jazz musician who’s self-taught,” says White. “I haven’t actually taken Granados’ music and put it in front of me and stole some stuff.” Rather, he tries “to get the flavour and add it to [his] own original music.”

“And that’s hard,” he concedes, “because you put yourself in a time period, and try to extract that back to reality.”

However, when it comes to bebop’s relevance in White’s music, he admits: “I don’t want to just stay in 1940. I’m trying to incorporate some new things as well.” On top of his affinity towards Charlie Parker and Bill Evans, White keeps listening to music, especially to those produced by Schulich’s own “unbelievable talent.”

In fact, the McGill professor is a product of that very crowd. He earned his M. Mus in sound recording at McGill, and followed that career path for some time, recording over 100 CDs featuring artists such as Kirk MacDonald and René Bolduc. So bringing the behind-the-scenes recording artist to the Segal’s centre stage is a neat contrast—this show is about him.

But it’s also about the audience:

“I want people who walk away from the concert [to] have a melody from the concert in their heads,” says White. “I’m trying to stay with the idea that the songs are memorable, but they’re not so complicated that they make your brain hurt.”

With all the modernist music out there, one finds solace in music that’s easy to listen to.

“For me, the most important thing is to play a good solo on every tune, not to play the parts perfectly, but that the improvising is at the highest level it can be, that I can produce,” White says. “That’s my interest, and that’s what I enjoy. It’s like when you close your eyes, and you play a good solo, sometimes it’s better than sex. Not always—but sometimes,” White laughs.

The musician and McGill professor is the exception to the rule that it’s nearly impossible to sustain yourself as a jazz musician. His upcoming performance promises quality music, delivered by a cohesive band, and pieces that are less Spanish, and more White.

The André White Quintet performs at the Segal Centre (5170 Côte-Ste-Catherine) Dec. 2. Tickets start at $15.

“What do you see?” repeats Mark Rothko to his assistant in an early scene of the Segal Centre’s RED, a Montreal production of the hit Broadway play by John Logan.

Lead actor Randy Hughson’s shrewd Rothko may as well be directing that question at us, his mantra imploring the audience to gaze deeply into the canvases that comprise the stage’s backdrop.

In translating the famous abstract impressionist’s work and life to theatre, careful attention is paid to the stage, so that the transfer of medium from painting to production remains faithful to Rothko’s artistic statement. The industrial-looking stage mimics the gym that he worked in, complete with towering works in progress and a wooden floor that the actors pace and splatter with paint. Rothko and his young assistant Ken (Jesse Aaron Dwyre) wheel the gigantic canvases around, adjusting the lights that illuminate their bodies in order to examine themselves. The actors’ in-scene manipulation of set pieces has them additionally serve as studio props, which helps create an immersive scene. The accuracy of the set, including the paintings, adds to this aim, too.

“Our building techniques, the way we make things, the lighting instruments that we’re using are all very authentic,” says Jonathan Rondeau, the Segal Centre’s director of production.

Authenticity is a concept Rothko himself struggled with throughout his career. RED focuses on a critical period in his life when he was commissioned to paint a series of murals for the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building in New York City, a project whose artistic integrity Ken eventually challenges. Ken is initially wide-eyed, reacting timidly to Rothko’s brash lectures and abrupt, pseudo-intellectual musings. Later on, however, their dynamic changes.

“[Ken] starts to infiltrate the relationship Rothko has with the paintings,” says Dwyre. “That’s when the show starts to break open, and we get revelations.” As Ken critiques the Rothkos from across a generation gap—according to Dwyre, he’s even more new-school than Rothko was at the time—RED explores the meaning and value of art.

The value of a Rothko is currently a hot topic in the art world. Art collectors have been criticized for turning Rothko’s paintings into commodities that preserve wealth, rather than visual statements for the enjoyment of everyone. Two weeks ago, Rothko’s No. 1 (Royal Red and Blue) sold for $75 million at the Sotheby’s auction house, the second-highest ever paid for one of his paintings. Orange, Red, Yellow sold for nearly $87 million earlier this year.

This issue is also examined in David Cronenberg’s 2012 film Cosmopolis, in which a predatory capitalist, played by Robert Pattison, expresses an interest in buying the entire Rothko Chapel, and is disappointed when his art dealer explains that it’s not for sale. The film comments on the irony of Rothko creating his Chapel as a public, nondenominational space, where anyone could see his work—a response to the privatization of his artwork that he considered the Seagram murals to be a part of. As RED shows, the inherent exclusivity of the Four Season’s space was the main reason the commission was ultimately turned down.

To continue the tradition of democratization of Rothko’s work, the Segal Centre will hold a free education session at McGill next week. The production may receive a fortuitious boost by two events: the Musée Des Beaux-Arts’ impressionism exhibit, and the much-hyped film, Skyfall, written by RED’s Logan—events that the Segal Centre hopes will encourage Montreal audiences to experience Rothko at a price that won’t put them in the red.

RED runs from Nov. 29 to Dec. 16, 2012 at the Segal Centre (5170 Chemin de la Croix-Ste-Catherine). Student admission $24.

Playing at Theatre Sainte-Catherine until December 2, Loucho: The Multicoloured Machine is a colourful explosion of giggles, gags, dance, juggling, balloons, hula hooping, acrobatics, pantomime, amazing feats of strength and balance, and straight-up fun. It has live music, audience participation, fabulous costuming, and a liquor license.  Take note: when this show says “all ages,” it doesn’t mean ‘for kids:’ it means ‘ditch your parties, gigs, and other supposedly cool Friday night activities, and get on down here.’

Written by Mark Louch, who also plays the lead—but featuring about one-fifth improvisation from the talented cast—Loucho is a tale with all the hallmarks of a winning production.

Drama! Dunderwaits, a mischievous, and rather terrifying villain, has seized control of a mysterious multi-coloured machine, and stands to suck all colour out of Loucho’s already bleak and impersonal world. Our hero is an endearing and inexperienced everyman who, one day at his office, unexpectedly receives an urgent summons to embark on an epic venture to save his world and loved ones. Will he succeed?

Romance! Loucho’s bumbling companion for the journey is the sweet-as-pie Sam (Lise Vigneault). From the pair’s synchronized sneezing and shared states of continual awkward bewilderment, we can tell Sam belongs by Loucho’s side forever—but will they realize this in time?

Amazing onstage feats! A night out at Loucho will treat you to a myriad of acts: from mid-air twists and plummets of jaw-dropping audacity, to a bowling-themed juggling extravaganza performed by a man with an impressively sleazy moustache, and a villain so terrifying that a member of audience had to be escorted out crying—twice.

Insightful social commentary! Loucho’s is a ‘hypermodern tech-crazed world destitute of colour,’ in which no joy exists. Everyone wears black and white, and the craze for technology is so rampant that even babies have cell phones. As comical as Dunderwaits and her monochrome, tech-obsessed henchmen may be, do they reveal to us a dark image of our future? This theme is surprisingly well-handled: the cast hails from a production company that specializes not in children’s fare, but instead produces instead thought-provoking theatre for the thinking adult. The threat of lost community and identity is communicated in a manner far less obtrusive and in-your-face than most adult literature or theatre—and with more fire. Did I mention there’s fire?

Sex appeal! Be sceptical as much as you like here, but the fact of the matter is, there’s repeated handholding, and very nearly, even a kissing scene! Abigail, the benevolent blushing maiden with an awe-inspiring solo hula scene, is played by the stunning burlesque producer Esmerelda Jasso-Nadaeu. You heard it here—burlesque!

A free lesson in French! The performance gets by on amazingly little dialogue: Loucho is a master of communicating in a void of sound, and it’s always impressive when it takes the voice of another performer to make you realize that the lead himself hasn’t uttered a sound for the past two scenes. Here, the scenes are constructed with the visual and the physical firmly at the centre. But, for those from out of town, bilingual children’s theatre is in itself, a spectacle to behold.

So get over your fears of clowns and “all-ages” event tags, and get on down to the circus. You might go in ‘ironically,’ but I challenge anyone with some humour and soul to leave this show without a genuine smile on their face.

Loucho runs until Dec. 2 at Théâtre Ste. Catherine (264 Ste. Catherine East). Tickets $15.

I walked through the doors of the Montreal, arts interculturels (MAI) last Friday to find the exhibit space deserted. “Excellent,” I thought to myself, as I passed the archway to the main hall—the stormy afternoon seemed an opportune time, and the ideal backdrop, to see the MAI’s latest offering, Blown Up: Gaming and War.

The exhibit’s arrangement exudes an ominous atmosphere, like some ephemeral worry one can’t quite remember. It is difficult not to appreciate the effects of this backdrop: viewers’ footsteps echo when striking the wooden floors, and the dim light pushes one’s gaze to the three pieces.

The first sight to greet visitors entering the sparsely arranged space is a lone, illuminated podium, atop which rest a keyboard, headphones, and mouse. On the opposing wall, a projector displays the title screen of the game, Wafaa Bilal’s The Night of Bush Capturing: A Virtual Jihadi (NBC:VJ). The idea alone is intriguing: Bilal inserted a graphical representation of himself, virtually recruited to assassinate George Bush Jr., into a two-bit piece of al-Qaeda propaganda entitled The Night of Bush Capturing (2006). The game consisted of the player passing six levels to eventually assassinate the former president. This, in turn, was a crudely orchestrated instance of cosmetic surgery on another game, an equally obscene piece of programming by the title of Quest for Saddam (2003), wherein players mow down Saddam-lookalikes until—surprise—they kill the final Saddam (in a humorous twist, the al-Qaeda version attempted to remove anything remotely American from the game, such as the Red Cross packs players can use to boost health; nevertheless, al-Qaeda’s programmers seemed to have forgotten an open book on the first level, which displays a picture of a camel).

I spent the better part of an hour on Bilal’s provocative piece (when the exhibit initially opened in the U.S., it was boycotted and shut down by locals who, never having had a chance to play the game, were uncertain as to why exactly it was that they opposed it), failing to see how it differed from the al-Qaeda iteration. Terrible gameplay, painful graphics, and offended gaming sensibilities aside, NBC:VJ provided disappointingly little by way of political statement: the credits still listed the “Global Islamic Media Front” (GIMF—a suitably inane acronym) as responsible, and Bilal’s avatar was nowhere to be seen.

Only having come home, and scouring the web for details on the game, did I discover the hitch: Bilal chose to make minimal adjustments to the game. In fact, when demonstrating NBC:VJ at a Rensselaer Institute lecture, Bilal noted “Just don’t blink because you’re going to see me in the game, and if you blink you’re going to miss it.” Rather than communicating the pervading sense of danger and alarm gripping Iraqi citizens, as was his aim, Bilal essentially shanghais the player into participating in a piece of al-Qaeda propaganda.

Due to space constraints, I can say little about the remaining pieces. Harun Farocki’s Watson is Down, one quarter of his Serious Games I-IV video installation, repeatedly plays on another wall; it’s akin to listening to a quarter of a song, and the lack of context that the three remaining pieces would have provided is strident.

The final piece, Mohammed Mohsen’s Weak, was, perhaps, the most interesting. Housed in a sleek black arcade-game exterior, Mohsen’s work rests between those of Farocki and Bilal, its default Windows 98 flying-star screensaver and foreboding joystick inviting players to try their luck. When I gripped the joystick, the screen filled with half-formed, pixelated shapes. Gunfire and sounds of military communications emerge, failure messages appear, but there is neither a goal, nor any sense of control. A blooming buzzing confusion ensues, coupled with a prevailing sense of discomfort. Such sentiments are well within the scope of the work: Mohsen attempts to portray tragedy, reconstructed from half-formed memories. Still, the same results may be derived from the press release, which states that “absurdity acquires meaning in the intimacy of nostalgia, amidst violence and tragedy.”

In spite of the atmospheric setting and flashes of emotion, Blown Up remains a regretful testament to the difficulties of communicating through novel media rather than a poignant portrayal of conflict. In the meantime, to those wishing to experience gaming and war, I recommend reading Owen’s Dulce Et Decorum Est and picking up a copy of Call of Duty.

Blown Up: Gaming and War runs until Dec. 15 at the MAI (3680 Jeanne-Mance, bureau 103), Free admission.