| << |
actuelleradio
to add to your cart, click the price (price always includes handling + air mail shipping)
top
Reviewby Nick Mott in Audion #42 (UK), March 1, 2000 |1277_004| 3 Musiques pour Ubu comprise almost all of Jean Derome’s compositions written for Denis Marleau’s Théatre Ubu. The first disc was inspired by reading the complete works of Beckett. Typical to other music on the label, it is very brassy, Iyrical and sombre. My interest waned, though there are some brilliant Art Zoyd/Univers Zero type moments with dramatic chopping strings and winds, interspersed with dead-stops for added tension. Disc 2, containing the works Les Ubs and Luna-Park, I found more enjoyable, more typically French, with Eric Satie like playful melodies, and some fine vocals, going on to wonderfully strange realms, almost sounding like The Residents at the end.
top
Critiqueby Alexandre Pierrepont in Jazz Magazine #485 (France), October 1, 1998 |1424| Chez les Contemporains (une ethnie), on connaissait le goût de John Zorn pour les musiques de films ou celui de Fred Frith pour les pas et figures des chorégraphes. L’étroite collaboration du saxophoniste, flûtiste et homme à tout faire Jean Derome avec la compagnie du Théâtre Ubu basée à Montréal agrandit ce cercle d’équilibristes. Au cours des dernières années, trois collages de textes ont donné lieu à autant de pièces et de musiques qui, sans tout à fait se soumettre à l’écrit, au jeu de scène, les relancent peut-être, généralement par annotations, précisément par morceaux, comme elles le feraient avec un partenaire supplémentaire et irrésistible Cantate grise s’inspire de Beckett et prête à ses divulgations oppressantes les miroirs tournants et les effacements d’un basson, d’un trombone, d’un violon et de flûtes. Luna Park reprend les chamboulements méthodiques des constructivistes russes du début du siècle et leur fait faire quelques tours de manège musical sous les commandes du trio Derome-Lussier-Tanguay, de leur ménagerie musicale, de leurs munitions bruitistes. Les Ubs, se mesurent inévitablement à l’innommable Jarry et à son très grotesque très mauvais et très ressemblant tigre de papier. Le sextette envoyé sur scène par Derome pour jouer les musiciens et les soldats des armées russe et polonaise fait le choix logique de la grandiloquence: il badine, fanfaronne et prend aux cheveux. L’irrévérencieuse «musique actuelle» serait-elle le meilleur souffleur que l’art dramatique ait connu?
top
Reviewby George Zahora in Splendid E-Zine (USA), June 29, 1998 |1064|
“… smashing stuff… Despite being separated from the performances they
were written to enhance, “3 musiques pour UBU” offers a broader than average
look at Derome’s work…”
Despite several years of high school and university French courses, I can barely speak a word of the language. This failing is thrown into sharp relief by discs like 3 musiques pour UBU, which are so aggressively “in-French” (well, Québécois, actually) that only a uniquely foreign and incompatible CD shape would rankle more. I’m literate enough, however, to determine that this double-disc consists of musical scores that Jean Derome created for three early-nineties productions by Montréal’s Théatre UBU — but as the CD booklet is entirely in French, those of us who are Gallic-challenged must make do with vague guesses about subject matter. The first disc contains the score to Cantate grise, which is based on several works by Samuel (Waiting for Godot) Beckett. Not too surprisingly, it sounds something like a fever dream — a seductive yet dischordant mix of strings and wind instruments that lapses between harmony and outright musical schizophrenia. Moments of gentle calm segue rapidly into vague unease and outright paranoia — smashing stuff. Les Ubs, based on the works of Alfred Jarry, is perhaps the most accessible piece on the disc, as well as the one with the most lyrics. Bearing a passing resemblance to the Brecht/Weill pantheon, it is upbeat and martial, full of steady, straightforward rhythms — complete with tuba oompahs — and hummable melodies. From the pictures, it looks pretty satirical, too. Luna Park, the final production, is also the most modern; in addition to highly stylized costumes and sets, it makes use of a mixture of traditional instruments and found and ambient sounds. Electronic noises, woodland sounds, tocsin bells, squeeze toys, chanting, a calliope and a plane crash all find their way into these tracks, making it the most challenging and intriguing of the three compositions. Despite being separated from the performances they were written to enhance, 3 musiques pour UBU offers a broader than average look at Derome’s work, and should intrigue fans of the hard-to-define electroacoustic genre as well as devotees of avant-garde theatre.
top
Critiqueby François Couture in CFLX, Délire actuel (Québec), April 14, 1998 |1192| Jean Derome touche à tout. Des côtés vieux swing de son Je me souviens -- Hommage à Georges Perec aux dissonances de Nous perçons les oreilles, Derome surprend souvent, tout en demeurant égal à lui-même. Son amour de la musique n’a d’égal que celui qu’il entretient aussi pour la littérature et le théâtre. De 1990 à 1992, il réunissait tout cela en tâtant surtout de la musique de scène. 3 musiques pour UBU est un album double qui regroupe trois oeuvres écrites pendant cette période pour le Théâtre UBU de Denis Marleau. Le premier disque présente Cantate Grise (50 minutes). Cette musique est inspirée de l’oeuvre complète de Samuel Beckett et se veut un hommage à cet auteur. Pièce à l’écriture à la fois dépouillée et exubérante, réflétant bien le minimalisme parfois verbeux de Beckett (non, ce n’est pas contradictoire!), Cantate Grise est intimiste et introspective. On y trouve Jean Derome, bien sûr, mais aussi Allan Laforest (flûtes baroque et autres) Shannon Peet (basson), Chantal Rémillard (violon baroque et moderne), Alain Trudel (trombone, etc. ) et plusieurs voix. Il s’agit de l’oeuvre de Derome se rapprochant le plus de la musique de chambre. Intéressant, bien que comprenant certaines longueurs. Le second disque contient deux oeuvres d’environ 30 minutes chacune. On trouve d’abord Les UBS, une musique pour fanfare de 6 musiciens et choeur des comédiens. Il s’agit d’un clin d’oeil à Alfred Jarry et à toute la pataphysique. Plusieurs textes de Jarry servent de canevas à des chansons fanfaronesques (à la fois fanfares et bouffonnes). Beaucoup plus légère que Cantate Grise, Les UBS décontenance par sa simplicité et son humour absurde. On y trouve Allan Laforest (flûtes), Carol Bergeron (percussions), Ivanhoe Jollicoeur (trompette et flugelhorn), Stéphane Jalbert (clarinettes), Jean-Denis Levasseur (clarinette, sax) et Jean Sabourin (sousaphone). La dernière pièce s’intitule Luna-Park et gravite autour des années d’ébullition sociale et artistique d’avant la révolution russe. Il s’agit de l’effort le plus intéressant de Derome dans le domaine de la musique de scène. Complexe, évocatrice, vibrante et nouvelle, la musique de Luna-Park met en scène pour la première fois le trio des Patenteux du Québec (Jean Derome, René Lussier et Pierre Tanguay sur différents instruments inventés et modifiés) auquel s’ajoutent Allan Laforest, Jean-Denis Levasseur, Jean Sabourin, Allyson Lyne (violon) et Pierre Olivier (synthétiseur). Une ode à l’invention et au renouveau, Luna-Park est le point d’intérêt principal de ce disque. En conclusion, il s’agit d’un disque qui plaira grandement aux amateurs de musique de scène et un bon complément à La Bête, l’effort précédent de Derome dans ce domaine. Néanmoins, 3 musiques pour UBU n’est pas un essentiel de la discographie de ce grand musicien. Plutôt un agréable complément.
top
Reviewby Kenneth Goldsmith in New York Press (USA) |1065|
“It’s a complete success, both in terms of the potential for ideas to easily
flow between the arts, and in terms of music—this is the most fun constraint-based
music you’ll ever hear.”
The dead white guy is back. After two decades of absence, he’s hot again, and judging from a slew of new releases and reissues, he’s dragged good ’ol modernism back with him. In hipster record shops around town, the racks are crammed with shiny new packages from long-ignored figures. A new label out of Italy, Alga Marghen, has dedicated its entire output to repackaging marginal figures in experimental music and sound poetry. As we move further away from the grip of multiculturalism, there’s been a veritable glasnost of musicians feeling the freedom to re-explore and reinterpret the legacy of high modernism, whether it’s the ST-X Ensemble’s obsession with Iannis Xenakis or Bang On A Can’s infatuation with Louis Andriessen. And for the first time since the 70s, large numbers of musicians are using experimental modernist writings either as the basis for compositions or as librettos. These new releases have been astonishing in how juicy they’ve made rather dry subjects sound. Who would have thought that music based on the arcane writing of Georges Perec or Samuel Beckett could be this much fun? In 1977 the Rome Opera commissioned Morton Feldman to write a piece of music using Samuel Beckett’s words. When Beckett met with Feldman, the first thing he told him was that he hated opera. Feldman heartily agreed, and the two set out to write an opera, or anti-opera. The result was Neither, the first recording of which has recently been released on the hat ART label. Neither has none of the trappings of opera—there’s no sets, no costumes, no story, no drama. The libretto is only sixteen lines long and consists of a mere 87 words. Feldman said of the text, “I see that every line is really the same thought said in another way. And yet the continuity acts as if something else is happening. Nothing else is happening. ” That pretty much sums up this disc—nothing really happens—it’s classic Feldman. A soprano, Sarah Leonard, sings and moans tiny phrases over and over to the point of numbness, while the Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Frankfurt echoes her phrasing in clipped shots. After 50 minutes of this, some incredible things start to happen, both to your sense of time and to your perception of sound. By the time it’s over you feel like you’ve acquired a dog’s sense of hearing—it’s incredible how rich “nothing” can sound. Feldman always insisted that his music be listened to at as low volume as possible. If the music seems to hover on the edge of silence, you’re hearing it properly. Call it classical ambient music. Beckett, likewise, in his later texts, also went for sparseness (his publishers would print works such as Company or Ill Seen Ill Heard in the largest typeface possible, with double spaced lines so that the buyer would feel like they were getting their money’s worth). It’s a perfect match—so good, in fact, that Feldman went on to write two more works involving Beckett—a new version of Beckett’s 1961 radio play Words and Music and 1987’s tribute piece to Beckett simply entitled, For Samuel Beckett. Beckett wasn’t always so minimalist, though. His early texts were more fleshed out and often based on word games as opposed to the very eerie, dry texts he wrote at the end of his life. One of the pieces on a new CD by Canadian composer Jean Derome, 3 musiques pour UBU, takes on Beckett’s Watt (1945), both as its subject matter and libretto. Derome’s music reflects the fullness and playfulness of the text. It’s earthy stuff, reflecting the confused gutter-mind of the bumbling servant Watt. The music is notated for a theater orchestra and incorporates instruments that have a lot of grain and character: rainsticks piss, bassoons fart, trombones stutter, piccolos twitter and vocalists scream out repetitive parts of the text. The music is as frantic, goofy and slapstick as the book—if someone didn’t tell you that it was inspired by Beckett, you might think that this was a soundtrack for a Buster Keaton film, which makes sense—Beckett admired Keaton so much that he made a movie, Film, starring Keaton in the 60s. 3 musiques pour UBU (Ambiances magnétiques) also contains the musical equivalent of Russian Futurist poetry in the composition Luna Park, which uses a collage of early 20th century texts by Blok, Gouro, Khlebnikov, Kroutchonykh, Maïakovskï and Malevitch. The piece starts off with creaky sounds of machinery, tipping its hat to Alexander Mossolov’s bone-rattling 1920s composition The Iron Foundry, and then moves into gentler nature sounds. From there it chugs along, flipping back and forth between clanging bells and Russian Orthodox liturgical chants, between industry and nature, as if trying to fuse the two. Derome also throws a healthy dose of social realist Soviet Army marching band music into the stew. The unusual mixture of humor and idealism works to invoke the optimism of the period, without sinking into the traps of nostalgia or preachy leftist political sentiment that generally come with this territory. The Dutch sound poet Jaap Blonk, on his new disc Vocalor (Staalplaat), also interprets Khlebnikov, as well as a gang of other dead white guys, including Man Ray and Antonin Artaud. The disc is just Blonk using his voice—there are no overdubs or electronic enhancements—and it’s the wildest shit you’ve ever heard. This stuff makes Kurt Schwitters’ recitation of his own Ursonate sound like Céline Dion in comparison (on Blonk’s previous solo release, Flux-de-Bouche, he actually took a stab at a section of the Ursonate). The Khlebnikov piece, Kolokol Uma is written and performed in the invented Futurist language Zaum and is variations on the word “um” (meaning “reason”, “mind”, or “spirit"). Scores of Zaumian neologisms are chanted, all ending in the sound of “um"—Doum, Daum, Mium, Raum, Khoum, Khaum—with occasional interruptions of short English phrases such as “Help me, bell-ringer, I am tired” sprinkled throughout. The piece goes on for almost seven minutes in a stream-of-consciousness manner, every once in a while emerging in “sense” only to delve back into Zaum again. It’s kind of like reading a short article written Esperanto—there are enough hooks combined with Blonk’s soulful rendition, that it doesn’t take long before you get the hang of it. A few years ago, Sub Rosa re-released Antonin Artaud’s banned 1948 radio play Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu. Blonk took Artaud’s texts and liberally reinterpreted them, fully capturing the sprit of Artaud. Rather than following the texts to the letter (were there really any written scores for this stuff?), Blonk has taken wide liberties with the writing; it’s an appropriately aggressive tack which captures the scarier, more insane aspects of Artaud. On this recording, Blonk sounds like Artaud on speed, barking and shrieking invented peyote-drenched chants. The liner notes tell us that Artuad’s French texts were interspersed with fragments of phonetic poetry, which he used to recite in his cell for hours on end, accompanying himself on little drums (a cut from the original radio play, “Beating and Exchanges Between Roger Blin and I” frighteningly documents this fact). Admittedly, wishing to recreate Artuad’s edginess fifty years later is an odd undertaking, but the fact that somebody is actually using such texts to create new works is encouraging. What was once written off as the ramblings of a madman are now finding their way into the musical canon. The final piece on the disc is a seven-minute interpretation of Man Ray’s poem, Lautgedicht dating from 1924. The original text is simply a poem that has been crossed out. Blonk has interpreted these deletions as censorship marks and for every word that has been crossed out, Blonk blares out a five-second long nasal honk. There are pauses between line breaks and paragraphs, giving the piece its own kind of rhythm. It ain’t easy stuff to listen to—it sounds like a goose that’s swallowed a smoke detector—and Blonk knows it, dedicating the piece to his “more seasoned listeners. " For years Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi has been kicking around as one of the most frequently interpreted modernist texts, inspiring musicians from the pop band Pere Ubu to the classical composer Bernd Alois Zimmerman in his opus Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu from 1982. Two new discs, inspired by Jarry’s text are on the record racks around town: Teiji Ito’s King Ubu (Tzadik) and the title track from Jean Derome’s 3 musiques pour UBU (Ambiances magnétiques). Teiji Ito was married to and collaborated with avant-filmmaker Maya Deren. In addition to making music, he also was involved in theater productions (he designed the Tin Man’s suit for the MGM film The Wizard of Oz) until his death in 1982 at age 47. Accordionist Guy Klucevsek, while serving as archivist for Ito’s prodigious musical output, dug up an old tape containing Ito’s score for a 1961 production of King Ubu, for which Ito received an Obie. The disc is wonderfully lo-fi and mixes sources unlikely as Sun Ra with Fluxus. There’s a raft of oddball instruments used that blend East with West: electric chord organs mix with Japanese Gagaku hichirkis and metal springs play off Hatian steel drums. African thumb pianos play Where Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone accompanied by glass bottle percussion. Maya Deren even makes two vocal cameos. What’s this got to do with Jarry? The liner notes tell us that Ito does a vocal improv “whereby he impersonates the ’debraining machine,’ a device into which Ubu tosses the bourgeoisie, so he can inherit their money and land. ” Ito smacks his lips, chews, swallows, clicks his tongue, and pats his mouth, imitating an early 20th century machine—it’s hysterical. Jean Derome comes closer to the classic interpretation of Jarry in his Les Ubs, a work intended for the musical theater. It’s typically rowdy and rollicking fare, with choruses singing French cabaret songs accompanied by a goofy brass band. The instruments are all slightly out of sync and have the feel of a drunken oompah band. There’s a cartoonish aspect to Derome’s music that smacks of Mingus’ The Clown and Darius Milhaud’s La Création du Monde, not to mention Carl Stallings and Spike Jones. Like Ito, throughout his score, Derome stays close to machine-like rhythms, giving the whole affair an assembly-line feel. Derome has recently released another new CD, Je me souviens - Homage á Georges Perec that creates a musical a parallel to the 60s constraint-based writing of Oulipo member Georges Perec. Derome has said that he’s interested in transposing ideas from other arts into music. If Oulipian writing is nothing more than a set of rules, why not transpose those rules to music? For his source text, Derome selected Perec’s Je me souviens, a book of Perec’s memories written in 1978. The self-imposed constraint that Perec posed for the composition of Je me souviens was that each of the memories that he came up with should be available to anyone roughly his age in his culture. Derome simply shifted these concerns into sound. His first step was to make a list of music that would be familiar to anyone his age in his culture from the years 1950-1970. He came up with names as various as Esquivel, Fellini, Earl Bostic, Ray Ventura, Ennio Morricone and Boris Vian and then narrowed the selections down to 26—a nod to Perec’s obsession with word games. Although Derome is an avant-garde improviser, he decided to execute the music in a manner that would be fitting to the period he was trying to invoke, and organized a band of thirteen musicians to play together in a studio without overdubs or enhancements. Derome studied studio arrangements from the period and imitated them for this recording, in an attempt to capture an authentic period sound. In a single take, the band rips through short numbers, none lasting more than two minutes; he even left the in-studio chatter between cuts, giving the disc a gritty and casual working feel. It’s a complete success, both in terms of the potential for ideas to easily flow between the arts, and in terms of music—this is the most fun constraint-based music you’ll ever hear. In our time of pluralist activity, these texts don’t seem as threatening or as monolithic as they once did. Perhaps they’ve been deflated by the high / low debate to become more user-friendly, playful chunks of cultural ephemera. The most wonderful aspect about the way musicians are using these texts is the lack of reverence with which they’re treating them. By applying taking great freedoms with the texts, using unconventional instruments and employing comic arrangements that heed no single style, they’re simply unveiling a side of modernism that was always there, but was never allowed to be spoken of in the holy name of high art. other texts in
actuellecd.com Jean Derome: 3 musiques pour UBU: reviews |
>> | |||
| << | >> |
