NO HAY BANDA
NO HAY BANDA is a Montreal-based ensemble committed to the production and performance of music rooted in exploratory and avant-garde practices. The group was founded in 2016 by three Montreal-based musicians – Daniel Áñez, Noam Bierstone, and Geneviève Liboiron – who originally met in 2011 at the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne’s new music summer course at Domaine Forget, in the Charlevoix region of Québec.
Taking its name from the central scene of David Lynch’s 2021 film Mulholland Drive, NO HAY BANDA (“there is no band”) was originally founded as a concert series and continues to function as one today. Based in the historic Montreal venue La Sala Rossa, it provides a platform for artists working on the fringes of established genres, realizing projects that might not otherwise take place. These concerts have attracted a diverse and dedicated Montreal audience, drawn by the group’s creative and stimulating performances.
No Hay Banda is the New Music ensemble par excellence for true collaborative work. Each musician is in full possession of scintillating virtuosity as improvisor and interpreter of notes, each is undaunted by the most outlandish and colorful theatricality of face and body expression, all while performing the most demanding tasks on their instruments.
As part of its concert series, NO HAY BANDA presents and invites composers to showcase monographic programs dedicated to their music. Over time and through numerous projects, the musicians have formed a flexible kind of ‘house band.’ The group performs newly commissioned works and special collaborations through its relationship with several composers and artists, resulting in distinctive productions presented across Canada and, more recently, internationally. As versatile artists, NO HAY BANDA musicians work with extended and extreme techniques, unconventional objects, electronic devices, and within theatrical and choreographic musical contexts.
A messy score is evidence of just how willing and enthusiastic the ensemble is to accommodate collaborative changes and revisions discovered in a rehearsal workshop, way beyond the call of duty. The reason is simple: to make the performance the most captivating it can be!
NO HAY BANDA promotes music born of a generation that sees no barriers between musical genres, theatre, performance art, and contemporary culture. Its productions are designed to broaden and challenge the audience’s musical experience, showcasing the work of an intergenerational avant-garde rooted in post-war experimentation, DIY culture, and improvisation, while drawing on influences from various forms of popular music. NO HAY BANDA views the performance space not as a museum for the reproduction of historical works, but rather as a site of potential — one to be exploited, shaped, and transformed in the service of all artistic endeavors.
This gathering of very human artists, who know how to turn hard work into great fun, owes its facility to an extraordinary and arduous organizational underpinning, which makes all the magic seem effortless when it hits the stage. No Hay Banda is the quintessential ensemble for New Music of a Bohemian democratic philosophy in the best sense, and Montreal is the great city to do just that!
NO HAY BANDA is equally comfortable performing through-composed contemporary music on conventional instruments, co-creating new works with composers, improvising, performing on found objects and electronics, and integrating theatrical and choreographic elements into performance. The ensemble has a particular affinity for long-form works, often seeking out and commissioning concert-length pieces.
Rarely have I found myself playing/interpreting notated scores with a group of musicians that posesses this delicious balance of generosity, intelligence and abundance of instrumental and vocal prowess. But never before joining No Hay Banda have I experienced all of these critical elements combine to make the joy factor drenched with so much presence and soul.
Highlights of NO HAY BANDA’s activities over the years include:
– A monographic program in 2017 dedicated to the imaginative and playful universe of composer Elena Rykova.
– The Canadian premiere in 2019 of Sideshow by Steven Takasugi—its first performance by an ensemble other than the commissioning group, Talea—followed by a Canadian tour in 2022.
– A 2020 production of Jennifer Walshe’s XXX_LIVE_NUDE_GIRLS!!!, a multimedia music theatre work in the tradition of 18th-century marionette opera, reimagined using Barbie and Sindy dolls.
– The 2022 release of NO HAY BANDA’s debut recording, I had a dream about this place, a double album featuring four extended-duration works commissioned from Anthony Tan, Sabrina Schroeder, Andrea Young, and Mauricio Pauly, issued on the ensemble’s in-house label, No Hay Discos.
– The 2024 commission of Three Unisons for Four Voices, a 70-minute work by celebrated composer Sarah Davachi, performed multiple times across Canada and at the Darmstadt Summer Course. A studio recording of the work is planned for release in 2026.
– The 2025 premiere of Il Teatro Rosso at Festival Montréal/Nouvelles Musiques—a large-scale music and film collaboration between Steven Takasugi and cinematographer Huei Lin. The project will also be presented at the Darmstadt Summer Course and the TIME:SPANS festival in New York, marking NO HAY BANDA’s first international tour. The work was released as an album on No Hay Discos, with further performances planned in the coming years.
In addition to the projects listed above, NO HAY BANDA has performed at festivals and series including Montréal/Nouvelles Musiques, The Music Gallery (Toronto), Everyseeker (Halifax), FIMAV (Victoriaville), Music on Main’s Modulus Festival (Vancouver), Suoni Per Il Popolo (Montreal), Ottawa Chamberfest, and Open Ears (Kitchener). The ensemble’s concerts and albums have been featured in numerous publications and media outlets, including La Presse, CBC/Radio-Canada, Vancouver Sun, Musicworks, Bandcamp Daily, A Closer Listen, Exclaim!, and The Wire. A recent feature on CBC News, titled “Wonderfully bizarre: why more people should take a chance on Montreal’s contemporary music scene” (March 2024), highlighted NO HAY BANDA’s contributions to the music community in Montreal.