Stéphane Roy: Migrations (CD): track detail

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Migrations

Stéphane Roy

Migrations

empreintes DIGITALes | IMED 0373 | 2003

CD 25.00 CA$

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imed_0373-1 |

1. Appartenances (2003) 27m06s imed_0373-1.1 | 13985 | ISRC CAD500317480

• Thème celte [Celtic Theme] • Thème latin [Latin Theme] • Thème oriental [Oriental Theme]

Composer: Stéphane Roy

Commission: Réseaux des arts médiatiques, with support from the CCA

Premiere: March 22, 2003, Rien à voir (13), Réseaux, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (Montréal, Québec)

Montréal moves to the universal rhythm of the multitude, a traveler scattering her traditions and cultures around the world. A striking acknowledgement after spending many years in such a conservative America: Montréal, MY city, is rich by her diversity, her cultural swarming, and the conviviality of her ethnic blends. Fascinated by the rediscovery of this urban landscape, I felt the urge to evoke it in music.

Appartenances (Belongings) grew out of phonographies of this Montréal mosaic recorded while walking around in the city streets. I have used these phonographies as raw sound material. I worked on it in the studio to shape it and let it slip toward a more abstract form. Besides a few explicit quotes, these transformations free the sound matter from its referent without stripping away its immanent nature: its aura, be it Celtic, Latin or Oriental, as you wish. As in many other pieces of mine, the poetic discourse is rarely denoted, instead it provides the initial impulse to open the doors to creation and reception, the impulse that helps one escape to the unheard-of, thanks to the interplay of sound forms.

[English translation: François Couture, ix-03]

Appartenances was realized in 2003 in the composer’s studio in Montréal and premiered on 22 March 2003 as part of the Rien à voir (13) concert series presented by Réseaux at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. Excerpts from the poems Heureux qui comme Ulysse… by Joachim du Bellay (1522-1560) and L’invitation au voyage by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) are read by Tzu Ying Hwong and Claudine Jomphe. Appartenances was commissioned by Réseaux with the help of the Canada Council for the Arts. Thanks to Tzu Ying Hwong for sharing in exchange some of the musical heritage of his native China.

1. Thème celte 6m08s imed_0373-1.1.1 | 13986

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Stéphane Roy

2. Thème latin 10m05s imed_0373-1.1.2 | 13987 | ISRC CAD500317490

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Stéphane Roy

3. Thème oriental 10m53s imed_0373-1.1.3 | 13988 | ISRC CAD500317500

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Stéphane Roy

4. Trois petites histoires concrètes (1998) 12m59s imed_0373-1.4 | 13989 | ISRC CAD500317510

• Ruptures • Micro-confidences • Pythaghorizons

Composer: Stéphane Roy

Commission: Réseaux des arts médiatiques

Premiere: October 28, 1998, Rien à voir (4), Réseaux, La Chapelle (Montréal, Québec)

To Pierre Schaeffer

Trois petites histoires concrètes (Three Short Concrete Stories) is a triptych commemorating the 50th anniversary of musique concrète. It is centered on three major topics that characterize the concrète approach: acousmatics, sound ‘shooting,’ and the exploration of sound space.

The acousmatic “rupture”: Surprising rupture! It was a legitimate hymen: the sound and the object to which it refers as a sign or a signifier. Such a union could be seen as an absolute necessity. This Pierre Schaeffer has thrown a stone into the pond and caused frogs to lose reason and sense, enough to render them completely acousmatic. But, splashed that we are, let us rejoice in our chronic acousmatism that opens up unsuspected horizons. Let us celebrate the closed but O so fertile furrow and the chromatism of a bell sounding the mourning of its attack.

The “micro-confidences” of the sound shooting: The microphone, its centering, its magnifying effect allow the recording of small frictions, slips and whispers which, caught on the fly, exacerbate the sensuality of hearing and modulate the intensity of the work. Micro-confidences commemorates the advent of sound shooting and modern phonography, great accomplices of this unfaithfulness to sounding bodies we have been practicing in closed rooms for the last 50 years, sometimes even hidden inside a cupboard.

Let’s “pythagorize” space: The opacity of the curtain Pythagoras hid behind was used to give transparency and depth to his teachings. With a similar opacity, dark and austere groups of loudspeakers, apathetic propagators, have been shouting, howling, whispering and singing our concrète selves for 50 years. This “curtain” of boxes and cones dissimulates to help us dream, wander, and get lost at the very edge of the sound horizon. Soloist in spite of himself in the first concrète music works, the loudspeaker has multiplied and takes the importance of an orchestra which confers to the works multiple colors and crazy kinetic trajectories in order to combine the horizons of the imaginary and the sound space.

[English translation: François Couture, ix-03]

Trois petites histoires concrètes was realized in 1998 at the composer’s studio in St Louis (Missouri, USA) and was premiered on 28 October 1998 as part of the Rien à voir (4) concert series presented by Réseaux at Théâtre La Chapelle in Montréal. Trois petites histoires concrètes was commissioned by Réseaux.

4. Ruptures 4m08s imed_0373-1.4.4 | 13990

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Stéphane Roy

5. Micro-confidences 3m50s imed_0373-1.4.5 | 13991 | ISRC CAD500317520

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Stéphane Roy

6. Pythaghorizons 5m00s imed_0373-1.4.6 | 13992 | ISRC CAD500317530

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Stéphane Roy

7. Masques et parades (2000-03) 24m57s imed_0373-1.7 | 13993 | ISRC CAD500317540

• Exultation • Burlesque • Noir silence [Black Silence]

Composer: Stéphane Roy

Premiere: March 22, 2003, Rien à voir (13), Réseaux, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (Montréal, Québec)

The tragi-comic nature of the circus is the lifeblood of this work. The circus provides a marvelous metaphor to bring together irrationality and drama, jubilation and self-control: a show spiced up with extreme moments and paradoxical quests where celebration and tragedy hold hands. Following this example, Masques et parades (Masks and Parades) stages the opposite dimensions of introspection and mask, sides hidden and revealed, darkness and light, drama and derision.

The work consists of three sections titled Exultation, Burlesque and Noir silence (Black Silence). The lively, euphoric, even brotherly mood of Exultation contrasts sharply with the grotesque feel and irrational, iconoclastic nature of Burlesque. Noir silence, the last section, draws its inspiration from the art of trapeze, metaphor of the compensatory work done by our psychological mechanisms in answer to the destabilizing assaults of a troubling world out of which one must make sense.

[English translation: François Couture, ix-03]

Masques et parades was realized between 2000 and ’03 at the composer’s studio in St Louis (Missouri, USA) and later in Montréal and was premiered on 22 March 2003 as part of the Rien à voir (13) concert series presented by Réseaux at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. The composer’s writings are recited by Claudine Jomphe and Stéphane Roy. Masques et parades was realized with the help of a productive scholarship from the Canada Council for the Arts.

7. Exultation 10m05s imed_0373-1.7.7 | 13994

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Stéphane Roy

8. Burlesque 5m59s imed_0373-1.7.8 | 13995 | ISRC CAD500317550

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Stéphane Roy

9. Noir silence 8m52s imed_0373-1.7.9 | 13996 | ISRC CAD500317560

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Stéphane Roy

Stéphane Roy: Migrations (CD): track detail

Prices are in Canadian dollars — 1.00 CA$ ~ 0.98 US$ ~ 0.71 € ~ 0.65 £ ~ 88.83 ¥ ~ 1.7 AU$ ~ 5.31 DKK ~ 5.72 NOK ~ 6.92 SEK — and include handling, shipping and applicable taxes.


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