Above all…
by Jean-François Denis, Claude
Schryer |imed_9604-0001|
The coming of the Montréal musiques actuelles/New Music America Festival
in November of 1990 inspired us to underline this event with the production
of a special disc, whose unifying concept would be a substantial artistic
challenge to composers and that would compel electroacoustics to surpass
itself. Therefore, we have commissioned twenty-five electroacoustic snapshots
by composers from Québec, Canada, the United States of America and
Mexico.
How then is this disc ‘new’? To merge popular song form (of a
three minute duration) with the concept of the video-clip reactualizes
electroacoustics by taking it out of the traditional concert hall and
transporting it to the world of media, of clips, of miniatures, of the
immediate… while still preserving the artistic integrity that
electroacoustics command today. This disc is more than a collection of short
pieces; it presents a synthesis of new electroacoustic creation as it is
practised in all of its forms. Each minature is a summary of the style of
each artist. A unique opportunity to visit and re-visit some of North
America’s most dynamic composers.
We also launched another challenge with this production, this time to
Québec City photographer Joanne Tremblay who
produced the photographs. As with the composers, who were imposed a temporal
framework, Joanne had a defined quantitative form to work with: twenty-five
black & white photographs and one in color.
The presentation of the photographs and texts, on twenty-five mobile
sheets, is meant to incite you, the listener, to listen to and to re-listen
to these pieces in the order of your choice. We have put the works into a
certain order for the disc, however this is by no means the only possibility.
By programming your compact disc player you can create you own sequence of
clips.
Jean-François
Denis, Claude Schryer,
Montréal [xi-90]
|