Photo — Bernadette Fink
Le Diamant is celebrating the 20th anniversary of Quebec City’s collective of unruly artists, L’orchestre d’hommes-orchestres, and its show Joue à Tom Waits. It’s the perfect way to welcome audiences back to Le Diamant!
The universe of Tom Waits opens up just like an apple under a sharp knife when an orchestra of busy multi-instrumentalists play his compositions on found objects and invented instruments. In lively scenes, the musicians play in front of each other and above each other. They switch voices, put their feet in their mouths, throw wrenches in the works and find themselves in dangerous situations.
L’orchestre d’hommes-orchestres is a collective of ragtag artist-musicians that formed in 2002. Uncategorizable and at the crossroads between several artistic disciplines, L’ODHO collective considers itself to be a permanent performing arts work-in-progress. The group has created 15 productions for stages and public spaces, including Joue à Tom Waits, Cabaret brise-jour, Tintamarre caravane, Les Palais and Kitchen Chicken. These productions have been performed in more than 90 cities in 20 countries in Europe, the Americas and Oceania. Chosen by Robert Lepage to receive the City of Toronto Glenn Gould Protégé Prize in 2013, L’ODHO also received the Prix Ville de Québec 2015.
Biography of the Creators
One of the unique aspects of L’orchestre d’hommes-orchestres is the collective approach the group has explored since their beginning. Together they have developed their own way of creating, which they like to describe as unruly. This approach has been fine-tuned over the years through the group’s projects as well as through the numerous collaborations and paths taken by members of the collective.
