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Music magazine, online journal, resource site, network compass, Hémisphère son is a multi-faceted multi-media with an insatiable appetite.
And the playlist - just one more, do you think? - 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 ...
... Michèle Tosi
Georges Crumb, Black Angels, (1971)
By American artist 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 funeral tribute to all the victims of that conflict. The sonic journey is an original one, drawing on the symbolism of numbers and a few quotations from works in the repertoire, such as the Dies Irae and the quartet from Schubert's Death and the Maiden. The glass harmonica resonating 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 (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 February 10, 11 and 13. The work is based on poems by Cordelia Lynn, recounting two experiences of love, one human, the other non-human. With solo voices, choir and electronic resources.
Florence Baschet, La Muette (2012)
La Muette by Florence Baschet is a monologue for soprano, ensemble and electronics premiered in 2012 at Ircam's Espace de projection. The libretto, conceived by the composer and translated into Persian by Baharé Khadjé-Nouri, draws on excerpts from an account by Chandrott Djavann, an Iranian novelist and essayist who denounces the condition of women in Iran. In the Mollahs' prisons, Fatemeh writes the story of her aunt and the fusional love she felt for this free woman, "scandalously different", bareheaded and smoking, 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)
Belgian soprano Sarah Defrise 's original and singular project for her first "contemporary" recording is to pay tribute to her elder sister Cathy Berberian (1925-1983), the American mezzo-soprano who was Luciano Berio's muse. Her disc is a veritable concept-album, featuring excerpts from an archive interview with Cathy Berberian, and even an electroacoustic collage composed by Sarah Defrise herself. She also delivers outstanding 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)
A belated discovery (relatively speaking), this compilation released by the indispensable Swiss label Les Disques Bongo Joe unearths a part of the Spanish post-punk and experimental scene of the 1980s that was totally unknown to me. Rhythm boxes and vintage synths, compelling atmospheres - which, knowing where they come from, are mentally tinged with sunshine - sound like a southern echo of Brussels' Disques du Crépuscule... and also herald a certain kind of Berlin electronic music from the turn of the millennium (Tarwater sometimes comes to mind). 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 filmmaker Alain Resnais and confidant of 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 in his own right. I recently discovered this fascinating trio for guitar, mandolin and harp from 1974, whose neoclassical atmosphere reminds me of the magnificent guitar pieces in his Royal Winter Music, and whose nostalgic humor evokes 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. The eight tracks were composed in the light of these unpredictable, enigmatic cities. Olivier Longre plays his new opus at the piano, in duet with double bassist Vincent Girard. Minimalist, melodic compositions, colored in places by a harmonica or clarinet, are joined by discreet noisy, electronic touches.
Maria Faust, Kootud relvad/WovenWeapons (2022)
One of Estonia's most internationally acclaimed artists, Maria Faust classifies herself as a neo-romantic with a blend of jazz, classical music and free improvisation. Kootud relvad/Woven Weapons is inspired by epigenetics and traditional knitting patterns. Just as DNA modifications pass on the traumas of war, famine or violence from parents to children, folk costume patterns transmit beliefs, heritage and a vision of a world.
Kootud relvad/Woven Weapons was created on the Emajõgi River in Tartu, Estonia, in January 2022.
TOVEL (aka Matteo Franceschini), The Act of Touch (2020)
Matteo Franceschini took the name TOVEL in 2017. "Under the name TOVEL, I want to delve deeper into the figure of the author/performer with the aim of experimenting with a new sound from the inside out" he writes, recounting his thirst for direct involvement on stage while also dreaming of abolishing the boundary between performer and spectator. and infusing the often formatted framework 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.
