In theatre, the term "red thread" means an invisible element, often implicit, which underlies the work, connecting all that is above (or below) the plot’s narrative mechanisms. Acting in the sphere of the unnamed, this concept seems eminently musical: what, fundamentally, makes a work an indivisible whole? An idea, an essence, an emotion? Music leads us to this level of abstraction, and this is from this stance that I’m trying to design musical figures rooted into sensation, imagined from the body, the body that performs, who hears, and thinks. In the case of Red Thread, it is red as a colour-sensation that was the "poetic attractor" at the origin of musical ideas. As we can wonder what is "red" in the middle of all its possible gradients, we are at the same time astonished by the infinite variety of sensations it suggests! The piece develops into a series of sequences featuring a musical action inspired by more or less paradoxical associations such as rouge-carré-rouge, blood-red, red-oblivion, liminal-red... fragments of the world seen through red...

Premiered at the Chapelle historique du Bon-Pasteur in Montreal on April 24, 2013, Fil Rouge was commissioned by Quasar with the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts.