The concert will take place in the Parnassus Theatre, an adapted neo-Baroque church.  On our way there we run into André's wife, Jameela, originally from Marrakech, and their two beautiful twin boys, eight years old, obviously late yet welcome arrivals.  We cannot chat for too long, so we're on our way again.  The church.  What a space!  We're in dreamland.  And André, a promoter like no other, took care of the gear.  Everything is there, i.e. great little PA system, lighting, all we asked for.

Things go smoothly, far too smoothly.  We'll pay for it later, that's the rule of thumb.  Or are we just oversensitive?

Finally, the gig, our first show in Europe!  Lights are switched off, excitement is in the air, you can feel that people's expectations are high.  So, let's start!

Nothing...  No sound, no nothing!  To us, computer-generated sounds is essential, as most of our pieces involve electronics.  And at that very crucial moment the skies seem to have fallen, crashing down around us!  Piotr's on the verge of a heart attack: everything worked properly just a quarter of an hour earlier!  Now, nothing!  NOTHING!  The confusion and tension are just incredible.

What do we do!  Piotr reconnects the cords, restarts his Mac.  Strange: the loudspeaker cords connected to our Yamaha mixer give him rather strong electric shocks every time he touches them.  Michelle quickly realizes that we should start from the basics: check all of the knobs and sliders.  Piotr does it - everything seems to be set up properly.  In an act of despair he disconnects those loudspeaker chords and despite the ongoing electric shock plugs them into the mixer again - and it works!  Have you ever seen happy and relieved people snatched from the jaws of despair?  It's us.

The rest of the show is uneventful (Jerry would have preferred the adjective "awesome", he's got a point there), with Gerry doing her usual best, Michelle creating a veritable array of emotions, Jerry doing his brilliant Hendrix routine on the electric violin, Chris in total control of the inimitable visual stuff, and Piotr half dead but doing OK, considering.

And the audience digs it!

After the performance, quite a few people stayed to talk.  They were visibly quite pleased with the programme and the performance.  They appreciated the music a lot, and asked good, good questions.  They were on our side from the very beginning and were relieved as much as we were when things began working properly again.  A model audience, worth suffering a lot of stress for (sigh...). 

Interesting: people say they do not experience this kind of multimedia stuff too often, if at all.  Jan Vandenheede, one of the composers whose beautiful Struktur I we did, confirmed: "Canadians are definitely on the cutting edge of experimental electroacoustic music and multimedia performance.  So I wasn't disappointed to come and see you do it: that was one good show.  Problems at the beginning?! 

They only added to the excitement!"  Cezariusz Gadzina, the Belgian-Polish saxophone virtuoso based in Brussels, who made a special trip to see us, added how impressed he was with our cool behaviour under fire and also with how professionally the tour seemed to be arranged.  He particularly liked the fact we brought with us a tour brochure. Designed by Edmonton's own Lon Wenger, it is, Gadzina said, both very elegant and informative.  One thing we will admit freely: without our main sponsors, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Edmonton Arts Council, we could only dream about the tour.