" – Peu importe d’où l’on vient. Il n’y a pas de tonique. Le thème et son développement ne sont qu’un mirage…
Il y a une musique toujours inattendue.
– Et les dissonances ?
– Dieu les a créées, elles aussi…"
Jaume Cabré - "Voyage d'hiver" - 2014

”La terre, il se pourrait bien après tout que ce soit une espèce
de merveilleux petit appareil enregistreur, plaçé là par on ne sait qui,
pour capter tous les bruits qui circulent mystérieusement dans l’Univers.”
Pierre Reverdy - ”En vrac” - 1929

”J’entends tous les bruits de la terre grâce à mes oreilles et mes nerfs de cristal
dans lesquels circulent le feu du ciel et celui des volcans.”
Michel Leiris - ”Le point cardinal” - 1927

"L'écoute, c'est l'ombre de la composition"
Pascal Dusapin - 2008

"Go, go, go! ... Go! go! ..."
John Lee Hooker"

 

20/04/2018

Chers amis du meubler perdu



 

 

 

"Chers Amis Du Meubler Perdu, Chers auditeurs" is a performance by Claus Böhmler recorded by Holger Hiller in 1984

 

 

Claus Böhmler, born in 1939, is a german Fluxus artist and media-scientist, working with video, drawing and modern techniques of image reproduction. He lives and works in Hamburg.

This crazy piece is based on a vocal performance in German, English and French 

and is cut on the Edition Block 's EP

"Materialien Zur Postmoderne In Bild Und Ton"

14/04/2018

Omaggio a Joyce



"Thema (Omaggio a Joyce)" is an amazing composition by Luciano Berio, using tape and the voice of Cathy Berberian, his wife, the intense and unique contemporary avant-garde music vocalist. Words are issued from chapter XI "Les Sirènes" of  "Ulysses", the James Joyce's famous novel. As an electroacoustic composition, the piece uses the possibilities of combining phonemes and the meaning of sounds that Joyce used in his text.

https://www.google.fr/search?q=ulysses+cover&safe=off&client=firefox-b&dcr=0&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi7qOWlwLnaAhUFIVAKHSwEBBYQsAQIJw&biw=1078&bih=653

A first version, titled "Omaggio a Joyce. Documenti sulla qualità onomatopeica del linguaggio poetico" was for a radio documentary and was build at "Institute of Musical Phonology", in Milan, Italy. Initially conceived for four audio channels, this version was finaly recorded in stereo in 1958 under the title "Thema (Omaggio a Joyce)" and published on a Turnabout' LP. In 1995, it was digitally restored as the definitive version.


"... I tried to interpret musically a reading of Joyce’s text, developing the polyphonic intent that characterizes the eleventh chapter of Ulysses (entitled “Sirens” and dedicated to music), whose narrative technique was suggested to the author by a common procedure of polyphonic music: the fuga per canonem..."  
Luciano Berio

http://cathyberberian.com/biography/
Luciano Berio & Cathy Berberian
***

"... par les moyens électroniques, le compositeur multiplie les bribes-mots, décompose et recompose les énoncés continus, les déforme (jusqu'à l'abstraction totale, fouillis de gazouillis et pépiements, souffles), en les manipulant selon des critères d'organisation différents de l'écriture du texte (par essence contraint par la nécessaire signifiance), en variant les vitesses, les durées et les bandes de fréquences..."  
source   



12/04/2018

Marvin Pontiac

http://johnlurieart.com/
deer and spotlight

John Lurie, the main founder of the NY's combo "The Lounge Lizards" in the late 70s and  actor in the famous Jim Jarmush' movies (Stranger than paradise - 1984, Down by law - 1986)  disappeared from NYC for quite one decade after a stalking incident. His whereabouts were a mystery and he is living now outside the United States on an island in a tropical climate where he spends much of his time painting.

 
After the amazing posthumous works of the African-Jewish musician, the legendary Marvin Pontiac in 1999, John Lurie is coming back with a new Marvin Pontiac CD issued last november: "The asylum tapes" , a twisted collection of songs about livestock, garden gnomes and horses falling down wells. Accompanying himself on guitar and banjo, Marvin’s plaintive voice is otherworldly. 

As enigmatic as the first CD, this new record "The asylum tapes" contains amazing short blues and unexpected songs.

interview and sources

Unmissable!



&

09/04/2018

Cecil Taylor in rehearsal




As a tribute to the great Cecil Taylor who flied away a few days ago, 
just look at the amazing movie directed by Gérard Patris around his work in 1965/66

in the famous serie "Les Grandes Répétitions"

"To me, the piano in itself is an orchestra"  
Cecil Taylor
To me, the piano in itself is an orchestra
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/cecil_taylor_204252


***
other links for "Grandes Répétitions" 
with Karlheinz Stockhausen here
& with Hermann Scherchen  here
 
***

05/04/2018

In a wandering world





est le titre de l'exposition et du film présentés dans la galerie "L'Autoportrait" à Marseille en 2017 par l'artiste Joséphine de Saint Seine.

https://vimeo.com/234314126
 
Un monde de nuages flottants dans l'air, incluant deux nuages de verre soufflé faisant directement partie de l'installation ayant généré le film éponyme.



"Particles in a wandering world"  is the title of the exhibition and the film showed in the Marseille's art-gallery "L'Autoportrait" in 2017 by the french artist Joséphine de Saint Seine.
A world composed by floating clouds in the air, including two of them carved in blown glass, part of the installation which generated the movie.

****

Film : Josephine de Saint Seine
Shooting : Gary Hurst
Editing : Alban Barré 
Original music : Jean Jacques Palix
Thanks : Bob Kohn, Daniéle Rivière & galerie "L'Autoportrait"




&  
two "painted grooves" from past works to look at here

****

02/04/2018

Sahba Aminikia


"Shetàbàn", a piece for viola solo played by  Hannah Nicholas.

 

Sahba Aminikia  is an Iranian-American composer born in Tehran in 1981. 
Trained in music by Persian pianists as Safa Shahidi and Gagik Babayan, in Russia at the St. Petersburg Stat Conservatory by Boris Ivanov Tishchenko, and in England by Sir Michael Tippett, he is now living in California.


"Life in Tehran taught me to appreciate hardship and beauty at the same time, and this is something that, due to heavy media propaganda, is mainly obscured in Western minds. I was brought up with the poetry of Hafiz, Rumi, and Saadi, and with Persian classical music, but was also largely exposed to the music of Pink Floyd, Beatles, Queen, and various jazz musicians. This conflict between the morals of a theocracy and Western cultural imports also exists in my mind, and I see it as a life process towards finding a common ground for communication and dialogue in my music."  Sahba Aminikia

He wrote numerous orchestral, vocal and solo pieces  performed all around the world, with famous orchestras and musicians.
He has been commissioned by theater companies, contemporary classical ensembles, film scores, Persian traditional music groups as well as jazz bands including Kronos Quartet, Symphony Parnassus, Mobius Trio, San Francisco Conservatory of New Music Ensemble and many others. 
***
The amazing CD "Miniatures" was published by the iranian Hermes Records

http://www.hermesrecords.com/En/Catalogue/Miniatures


***

recent works here
 
interview here
 
***

Recently in 2017 he was invited as artist-in-residence at Kronos Festival.

"Tar o pood" with the Kronos Quartet