Biography
Wondeur Brass originated in late-seventies Montreal as a nine-piece collective fusing feminist activism with theater and music on Duluth street. Over the 1980s the ensemble steadily reduced its membership while acquiring greater precision and cohesion, moving from an expansive outsider big-band format toward the city’s most incisive avant-garde rock statement, aligned with experimental currents then active in New York and London. Across its span the group issued two albums, gave rise to the side project Les Poules, became Justine in 1990, and above all advanced the careers of Joane Hétu, Diane Labrosse, and Danielle P. Roger, three central figures in Montreal’s musique actuelle scene.
Its beginnings lie with a network of left-field musicians and listeners who promoted sounds independent of commercial constraints and intended for communal participation. A benefit concert for a feminist organization prompted nine women already active in separate projects to assemble Wondeur Brass, a name that alluded both to a brassiere manufacturer and to the band’s brass-dominated instrumentation completed by piano and drums. Guided by free jazz, punk, and new-wave impulses, the musicians prepared a debut performance in 1980 that placed agit-prop rhetoric on equal footing with the music; at that moment the mere existence of an all-female lineup carried its own statement. Feminist listeners responded enthusiastically, yet some observers wished for stronger technical command.
By 1982 the band had moderated its political emphasis, introduced electric bass, gravitated closer to rock, and contracted to seven members: Hétu, Labrosse, Roger, Ginette Bergeron, Claude Hamel, Martine Leclercq, and Judith Grüber-Stitzer. This lineup released the self-issued single “Parano” and toured Quebec. In 1985 Hamel and Leclercq departed while trombonist Hélène Bédard arrived; the resulting sextet recorded the debut album Ravir and aligned itself with the male artists of the newly established Ambiances Magnétiques collective.
Unable to escape the initial impressions formed by Montreal journalists, Wondeur Brass nevertheless attracted greater attention overseas. The group appeared at the fourth Congrès International Femmes & Musique in Paris during 1984, followed by performances at the Moers and Musique Action festivals in 1987 and engagements in New York and London in 1989. Chris Cutler, drawn to the Ambiances Magnétiques roster, placed a Wondeur Brass track on the LP accompanying Vol. 1, No. 4 of the ReR Quarterly. The second album, Simoneda, Reine des Esclaves, appeared in 1987 with a sharply reduced quartet comprising only Hétu, Labrosse, Roger, and bassist Marie Trudeau, pursuing a markedly tighter musical course. Seeking renewed local interest, the same four musicians adopted the name Justine in 1990 and released the album (suite).
Its beginnings lie with a network of left-field musicians and listeners who promoted sounds independent of commercial constraints and intended for communal participation. A benefit concert for a feminist organization prompted nine women already active in separate projects to assemble Wondeur Brass, a name that alluded both to a brassiere manufacturer and to the band’s brass-dominated instrumentation completed by piano and drums. Guided by free jazz, punk, and new-wave impulses, the musicians prepared a debut performance in 1980 that placed agit-prop rhetoric on equal footing with the music; at that moment the mere existence of an all-female lineup carried its own statement. Feminist listeners responded enthusiastically, yet some observers wished for stronger technical command.
By 1982 the band had moderated its political emphasis, introduced electric bass, gravitated closer to rock, and contracted to seven members: Hétu, Labrosse, Roger, Ginette Bergeron, Claude Hamel, Martine Leclercq, and Judith Grüber-Stitzer. This lineup released the self-issued single “Parano” and toured Quebec. In 1985 Hamel and Leclercq departed while trombonist Hélène Bédard arrived; the resulting sextet recorded the debut album Ravir and aligned itself with the male artists of the newly established Ambiances Magnétiques collective.
Unable to escape the initial impressions formed by Montreal journalists, Wondeur Brass nevertheless attracted greater attention overseas. The group appeared at the fourth Congrès International Femmes & Musique in Paris during 1984, followed by performances at the Moers and Musique Action festivals in 1987 and engagements in New York and London in 1989. Chris Cutler, drawn to the Ambiances Magnétiques roster, placed a Wondeur Brass track on the LP accompanying Vol. 1, No. 4 of the ReR Quarterly. The second album, Simoneda, Reine des Esclaves, appeared in 1987 with a sharply reduced quartet comprising only Hétu, Labrosse, Roger, and bassist Marie Trudeau, pursuing a markedly tighter musical course. Seeking renewed local interest, the same four musicians adopted the name Justine in 1990 and released the album (suite).
Albums