Point d’ouïe #5 : Pierre-Luc Senécal

Pierre-Luc Senécal is a composer, sound artist, and the founder of Growlers Choir, the world’s only metal singer choir. During his residency, he will explore how to transmute the live concert experience of Growlers Choir into a sound installation. Since 2019, he has led this extraordinary group of artists who specialize in throat singing and vocal sound effects. These vocal performers produce an impressive array of growls, screams, textures, and vocal timbres, which Senécal orchestrates into original compositions.

Their numerous shows (Les voix de l’abîme, Vox Colossus, Basileus, La Suspendida) showcase these artists, whose charismatic presence leaves a strong impression on audiences. Thanks to the overwhelming dramatic power of the ensemble, audiences often report being stunned and deeply moved by their performances.

The residency will provide an opportunity for Pierre-Luc Senécal to explore new setups that would allow audiences to experience the growlers outside the concert hall. For example, a gallery space could host 18 free-standing loudspeakers, each projecting the voice of a different growler. Listeners would be free to move from speaker to speaker. Standing at the center of the circle of speakers, a listener would perceive a chilling sound—as if an eighteen-headed monster were roaring. By approaching one of the “heads,” they would be able to hear the unique qualities of each timbre, the breaths, and thus witness this play of perception between the whole and its individual parts.

The residency will allow Senécal to explore how to represent the growlers within an installation, and to discover how a choir might be “decomposed” and rematerialized elsewhere in the world—without the physical presence of the growlers—thereby multiplying the work’s reach and impact.

📸 : Camille Gladu-Drouin