Intimes exubérances is the culmination of a partnership between celebrated Montréal-based composer Patrick Giguère and Cheryl Duvall, a renowned pianist-interpreter based in Toronto. It is album-length work from Giguère, and his first substantial piece for solo piano.
The creative process behind the work involved a great deal of improvisation and direct contact with the piano, Giguère’s primary instrument, both of which impart the piece's singular feel. The form that unfolds throughout its almost one-hour duration is at once volatile and grounded, its restlessness tempered by a patient, almost meditative way of dispersing material. Giguère's extemporaization may have ultimately been formalized, but the resultant work carries an underlying momentum of spontaneity as well as the idiosyncratic expressiveness that characterizes improvisation. The music spans dim, spacious murmurs to explosive virtuosity but articulates these sizeable shifts in a manner that maintains mesmeric cohesivene Read more
Laisser vibrer (to let ring)... is the starting point of this work; the gesture of hitting the metal, its resulting sound moving through time and space, evolving harmonically. As the music relentlessly progresses, the gongs drag the listener into a sonorous universe made of sustained resonances with rich, shimmering and unique timbres. In fact, t
« Confronter le silence, émettre un son, c’est vérifier sa propre existence » affirme le compositeur japonais Toru Takemitsu, dont l’essai Confronting Silence a grandement inspiré ce projet, autant dans sa genèse, son processus créatif - réalisé dans un esprit de collaboration entre tous les participant·es - que dans son expression poétique.
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‘Fragile, yet determined’: the first words in Giguère’s score tell us much about what the work has in store. This is music about exposure and disclosure, of layers being gradually stripped away and of the determination and confidence that this process demands. ‘The p Read more
Le sel de la terre was written for Thin Edge New Music Collective and Paramirabo’s Raging against the machine Canadian Tour. My understanding of the «machine» in this context is the consumer-oriented society in which we live. With the help of publicity, mass culture, entertainment as well as traditional and social medias, «the machine» influences our lives by setting standards for success, happiness, body image, etc. By doing so, by pushing us to play pre-determined roles, like gears in a mechanism, it ensures its continuation.
However, some people like activists, artists, craftsmen, community workers, organic farmers are raging against the machine by choosing to put their values, their passion and their sense of community in front of money, fame and entertainment. The writer Samuel Archibald, in his essay Le sel de la terre, calls these people «le sel de la terre», and it is to them that I want to pay tribute.
With this work, I tried to bring into existence, for a few minutes, a world without the p Read more
