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Radio ›› La machine à explorer le tempo
1 janvier 2005
Par Marc Chénard in Coda Magazine #307 (Canada), 1 janvier 2005

Texte

«If the music makes you smile, it will have accomplished its aim…»

In this hour-long suite of 18 items penned by Robert Marcel Lepage, the listener is taken on a whimsical trip into the Machine for exploring tempo (a pun which plays on the French equivalent to H.G. Wells’ Time Machine, i.e. La Machine a explorer le temps"). In this instrumental work divided in three acts, the composer actually conducted an eclectic tentet, the core of whom are a baroque ensemble in Montréal called la Nef. Even more unusual is that this ensemble actually commissioned this suite for performance at a contemporary music festival held in March of 2003. And to make things even more curious, when have you have heard a lineup that includes viola de gamba, ritual flutes, sackbut, slide guitare, sampler and tabla? Lepage regularly composes for film, and this is a music of images, of stylistic references galore but of no single or underlying vision. This is light-hearted stuff, which the composer further underscores in his whimsical presentations between the acts. Despite brave attempts to translate parts of his narrations in the liner notes, much of the humor is lost and the spoken tracks will appear pointless to non-speakers of French. In this highly structured music, there is very little soloing, but trombonist extraordinaire Alain Trudel makes the most of his spots. If the music makes you smile, it will have accomplished its aim, so it’s best not to expect any heady stuff. (PS. I attended this performance, and smiled, too.)

blogue@press-2750 press@2750
1 janvier 2005
Par Luc Bouquet in ImproJazz #111 (France), 1 janvier 2005

Texte

«Pari réussi, haut les mains pour nos délicieux délinquants québécois.»

Robert Marcel Lepage est un touche-à-tout de génie. Clarinettiste, dessinateur, compositeur, nageur émérite, il souscrit aux paris les plus extravagants. Par exemple, composer et diriger trois pièces pour la Nef, formation de musique ancienne. Ici, Lepage conçoit une machine à explorer le tempo; paradoxes musicaux temporels en trois parties: le temps passe… le temps file… le temps fuit… Un métronome pendule ouvre le bal d’une musique décapante. Des blocs: valse, musique répétitive, jazz, country, musique hawaïenne, rock, muzak. Des épices: malice, forêt luxuriante, connivence, non-sens absolu, détournements… Et surtout un humour à fleur de peau (sensibilité, idem!), des privates jokes corsaires (l’élimination des temps morts semble être l’obsession du compositeur), des évidences et de beaux partages. Pari réussi, haut les mains pour nos délicieux délinquants québécois.

blogue@press-2759 press@2759
1 octobre 2004
Par Rigobert Dittmann in Bad Alchemy #44 (Allemagne), 1 octobre 2004

Coupure de presse

blogue@press-2630 press@2630
24 juin 2004
Par Jason Kirk in Splendid E-Zine (ÉU), 24 juin 2004

Texte

«The result is stunning.»

Often detached, dusty and irrevocably divorced from the context in which they were hatched, live albums tend to be museum-quality the moment they leave the mastering suite. Occasionally, though, a concert recording escapes the hobbling likelihood of staid sexlessness and captures as much animated verve as any studio project. Take Robert Lepage’s collaboration with Montréal’s La Nef. This three-part extravaganza, recorded at Quebec’s premier new music festival in March of 2003, begins with an eclectic cache of instrumental textures and ends with a portable version of Lepage’s most recent opus, which loses almost nothing in translation.

La Machine…’s thematic premise is simple. The composition begins with three idiomatic understandings of time (time passes, time flies, time slips by — called “Paradoxes” here) and uses each to guide a long musical movement from the outlands of avant-inscrutability home to the motherland of meaning. The result is stunning. Aided by La Nef, an ensemble of ten (including common chamber instruments and percussion, as well as guitar, banjo, tenor sax, viola da gamba, sackbut and live sampling) spools out the instrumentally dense compositions. The sheer conglomeration of the ensuing sounds would be enough to snare the open minds of many a curious listener, but the resonant respect for the audience inherent in Lepage’s complicated composition truly wins the day.

After an introductory address spoken in French over a pastiche of cuckoos, whistles and other frenetic clock noise, Confitures de sable eases in the proceedings with an armature of swaying, repetitious bass, splashing auxiliary percussion and gentle string swells. Loosely played flute and brass wash across the foundation with gentle, exploratory touch of a lover in patient heat. Then, like a freak parade in a conservatory, Le Tamponneur de triolet crashes in with a stomping insistence that, for all its initial bravado, ends up degenerating into a trombone and electronic effects duet that pulls off a wholly charismatic simultaneity of cranky savvy, flirtatious cloying and technical wizardry.

A seriously laid-back island vibe sets in with La Nef en bateau, at which point the remarkably organic fluctuation of disparate moods that informs the work is firmly established. Without ever interrupting the piece’s rum-cocktail fluidity, lazily plucked slide guitar, wispy flute, wandering violin and smarmy shaker dominate. Chronotopie du Cancer could be a Danny Elfman score, if only he weren’t stuck in the same always-recognizable chordal modes we’ve heard in countless Tim Burton films. The palatable insanity of the mood treads the line between intention and caprice without a missed step, and in closing the first movement, the track is a flat blast — and perfect punctuation.

In the second movement, Ennio Morricone rises from the grave, albeit through the funhouse mirror that refracts the entirety of La Machine…. Banjo, guitar, major chords and fickle entropy rise to the fore in the six tracks of this middle “Paradoxe,” whose highlight is Le Coup d’archet est toujours plus vert dans la cour du voisin, a gritty and heavily effected string solo that puts any all-star fiddling on live Yanni discs straight to shame. The movement wraps with a delicate waltz that may be the disc’s most derivative two-and-a-half minutes, but remain no less lovely for their lesser challenge.

“Time” indeed “slips by” in the “Troisième paradoxe.” Short, elegant and appropriately ethereal, the movement’s five tracks (excepting a break to introduce the musicians) work like a lubricated rub-down in the wee hours after a long, happily challenging day. The closer (Oups! J’ai échappé ma boîte d’accords majeurs!) slides through varying tempos while lightly hammering a two-beat alternation that brings this mad masterwork to an ideal denouement, as if Montréal weren’t already the front-runner for the Most Steamy North American Hotbed of the New Millennium Musical Vanguard Award. Phew! Now go towel off.

blogue@press-2524 press@2524
11 mai 2004
Par Dolf Mulder in Vital #421 (Pays-Bas), 11 mai 2004

Texte

La machine à explorer le tempo is an epic and narrative work. Cinema turned into music. Not so strange since Lepage wrote soundtracks for over hundred films and documentaries. The work is performed by the La Nef Ensemble. A suite in three parts, each part subdivived in 6 minor parts. This ensemble is specialised in playing early and traditional music, as well as new music. Founded in 1991 developped into a very dynamic and eclectic ensemble. Here they play a new work on new and traditional instruments: Stéphane Allard (violin, baritone violin), Ganesh Anadan (percussion), Nicolas Boucher (sampling and live sound treatment), Nicolas Caloia (double bass), Yanik Cloutier (guitar, banjo), Claire Gignac (flutes, ritual flutes, tenor saxophone), Patrick Graham (percussion), Betsy MacMillan (viola da gamba), Alain Trudel (trombone, sackbut) and Samuel Vero (trumpet, piccolo trumpet). Together they give away a very joyful and fresh rendition of La machine… , recorded during concert on march 8th, 2003. All three parts are introduced by Lepage and evoke different aspects of time: the time that passes, the time that hurries by and distorted time. Lepage is inspired by the novel of H.G.Wells Time Machine. The three parts differ in many respects. We hear different types of music and musical styles. Nice melodies and themes where you immediately ask yourself where did I hear that before, but that are impossible to identify. As a consequence the music often sounds ‘familiar’ and ‘safe’. The instrumentation ranges from traditional instruments like viola da gamba to live sampling. Beautiful banjo playing by Yanik Cloutier and extravagant trombone playing by Alain Trudel, etc. Considering this great diversity we should compliment Louis Babin for the arrangements, because the work changes colours very naturally. A nice work by workaholic Robert Lepage.

blogue@press-2480 press@2480
1 mars 2004
Par Henryk Palczewski in Informator “Ars” 2 #39 (Pologne), 1 mars 2004

Coupure de presse

blogue@press-2580 press@2580

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