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A music magazine, an online journal, a resource site, a network compass, Hémisphère son is a multi-faceted multimedia with an insatiable appetite.
And the playlist - one more, you may ask? - is a unique and simple way to inventory, list, collect and present artists, records and creations outside our reviews.
So see you every month or so!
The tour of the ...
... Michèle Tosi
Georges Crumb, Black Angels, (1971)
By the American George Crumb, Black Angels (1971) - thirteen images from the land of darkness - is a singularly powerful piece written at the height of the Vietnam War; a kind of funereal tribute to all the victims of this conflict. The sound journey is original, using the symbolism of numbers and a few quotations from works in the repertoire such as the Dies Irae and the quartet from Schubert's The Maiden and Death. The glass harmonica that resonates under the bow of the performers is an episode as fragile as it is poetic, erasing all temporal reference points.
Sivan Eldar, Heave(2018)
Heave (Heave) by Israeli composer Sivan Eldar for six voices and electronics anticipates the subject of her opera Like flesh, which she has just premiered in Lille and which the Opéra Comédie de Montpellier will host on 10, 11 and 13 February. The work is based on poems by Cordelia Lynn recounting two experiences of love, one human and the other non-human. With solo voices, those of the choir and the resources of the electronic tool.
Florence Baschet, La Muette(2012)
La Muette by Florence Baschet is a monologue for soprano, ensemble and electronics created in 2012 at the Ircam Projection Space. The libretto, conceived by the composer and translated into Persian by Baharé Khadjé-Nouri, takes extracts from the story of Chandrott Djavann, a novelist and essayist of Iranian origin who denounces the condition of women in Iran. In the prisons of the Mullahs, Fatemeh writes the story of her aunt and the fusional love she felt for this free woman, "scandalously different", bareheaded and with a cigarette on her lips, who became mute "so as not to betray".
... by David Sanson
Sarah Defrise, For Cathy, A Capella Album, A Tribute to Cathy Berberian(Sub Rosa, 2021)
An original and singular project for Belgian soprano Sarah Defrise for her first 'contemporary' recording: paying tribute to her elder sister Cathy Berberian (1925-1983), an American mezzo-soprano who was the muse of Luciano Berio. Her disc is a real concept album, including extracts from an archive interview with Cathy Berberian, and even an electroacoustic collage composed by Sarah Defrise herself. She also delivers striking interpretations of Pousseur's Phonèmes, John Cage'sAria and the hilarious Stripsody, a "cartoonish" piece by Cathy Berberian herself.
La Ola Interior - Spanish Ambient & Acid Exoticism 1983-1990 (Les Disques Bongo Joe compilation, 2021)
Discovered late (everything is relative), this compilation edited by the indispensable Swiss label Les Disques Bongo Joe exhumes a part of the Spanish post-punk and experimental scene of the 1980s that is totally unknown to me. Drum machines and vintage synths, gripping atmospheres - which, knowing their origin, are mentally tinged with sunshine - resound like a southern echo to the Brussels Twilight Records... and also announce a certain Berlin electronic music of the turn of the millennium (one sometimes thinks of Tarwater). The kind of music and records that the patina of time only enhances.
Hans Werner Henze, Carillon, Récitatif, Masque (1974; YouTube video by trio sixty1strings)
A collaborator of the filmmaker Alain Resnais and confidant of the poet Ingeborg Bachmann, Hans Werner Henze (1926-2012) was the last representative of the great German symphonic tradition, and a piece of twentieth-century history all his own. I recently discovered this fascinating trio for guitar, mandolin and harp from 1974, whose neo-classical atmosphere reminds me of the magnificent guitar pieces in his Royal Winter Music, and whose nostalgic humour reminds me of certain pages by Mauricio Kagel.
... by Sandrine Maricot Despretz
Olivier Longre, Amore Disamore(Cristal Publishing / Absilone - 2021)
Amore Disamore,Olivier Longre 's new album, is freely inspired by Italo Calvino's novel Les Villes Invisibles, a love poem to cities and a subtle reflection on language, utopia and our modern world. It is in the light of these unpredictable and enigmatic cities that the eight tracks were composed. Olivier Longre plays his new opus on the piano, in duet with the double bass player Vincent Girard. To the minimalist and melodic compositions, coloured in places by a harmonica or a clarinet, are added discrete noisy and electronic touches.
Maria Faust, Kootud relvad/Woven Weapons (2022)
One of Estonia's most internationally acclaimed artists, Maria Faust classifies herself as a neo-romantic with a mixture of jazz, classical music and free improvisation. Kootud relvad/Woven Weapons Her work is inspired by epigenetics and traditional knitting patterns. Just as DNA changes pass on the trauma of war, famine or violence from parents to children, folk costume patterns pass on beliefs, heritage and a world view.
Kootud relvad/Woven Weapons The first performance on the Emajõgi River in Tartu, Estonia, took place in January 2022.
TOVEL (aka Matteo Franceschini), The Act of Touch (2020)
Matteo Franceschini takes the name TOVEL in 2017. "Under the name of TOVEL, I want to deepen the figure of the author/performer with the aim of experimenting a new sound from the inside" he writes to tell about his thirst to get directly involved on stage while dreaming of abolishing also the border between performers and spectators. and to infuse the often formatted frame of the "classical concert" with vitality as in Songbook, even trance ... thus Act of Touch.
THE ACT OF TOUCH (2018) - [trailer] from Matteo Franceschini on Vimeo.
