Recordings
Mixed Music
Étude sur le flou (2024)
flutes, tenor saxophone, piano, percussion, analogue camera and electronics | dur. 12’
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This piece is part of a series of studies staging the photographic act to draw on its gestural theatricality as well as its particular relationship to memory and sound. The analog camera serves to orient the piece within my own memories. Through its connection with the electronics, a vague past, linked to particular places and their sounds, is not only evoked, but inhabited by the piece.
This piece was composed for Proxima Centauri during the Académie Mixte (2023-24) and performed alongside four other new works at their Festival MÀD in Gradignan, France.
Étude sur le manque (2023)
viola, disklavier, analogue camera and electronics | dur. 18’
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The main idea behind “étude sur le manque” was to link photography and music’s particular relationship to memory, nostalgia and grief. The analogue camera is used to place the piece within my own personal memories of places and their sounds and to invite listeners into the intimacy of those memories. When Hortense takes a photo of the disklavier it plays a modified quotation of a Brahms Capriccio (op. 76 no. 8 ), one of the last pieces I learned as a high schooler with my piano teacher. The rest of the piece is based on this quotation and represents a dramatised rehearsal between Hortense and the missing pianist evoked by the disklavier. The piece is an hommage to Doug Heist who was my teacher from 2005-15 and then a friend, leaving an indelible mark on me as a person and musician. Doug passed away in July 2020.
This piece was composed for and performed by Hortense Fourrier.
‘neath silken scars (2023)
bass voice and live electronics | dur. 4’
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This piece was composed for and performed by Martin Wistinghausen for the Remus Georgescu Festival hosted by the Banatul Philharmonic in Timișoara Romania. This short piece for bass voice and electronics sets a poem of mine called « Small red stones » to music. The text is a reflection on the more pernicious side of memory and refers to those things which stubbornly stick with us despite our desire to leave them in the past. The premiere performance took place in the national Romanian opera house in Timișoara.
J’ai allumé deux fleurs tremblantes (2021)
violin, soprano saxophone, live electronics | dur. 9’
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J’ai allumé deux fleurs tremblantes is inspired by the poem “En guise de fête” (loosely: In the guise of celebration) by Anne Hébert. I was especially struck by the poem’s peaceful atmosphere, which is gradually infiltrated and transformed by a distant morbidity. This coexistence of peace and pain, quotidian calm and global suffering seemed very relevant to pandemic life.
The music attempts to recreate these troubling dichotomies, as well as the imagist chiaroscuro play used to evoke them through a contrasting language of planing lines and frustrated repetitions. Undifferentiated time is prolonged, only to be interrupted by the sudden burst of the immediate present. Finally, the music is transformed into a nonsensical dance, still trapped in languorous repetition but resolved to inhabit it fully in the guise of celebration.
This piece was composed for and performed by Jeanne-Sophie Baron and Ludovik Lesage-Hinse.
Till human voices wake us and we drown (2021)
percussion quartet, amplification, fixed media electronics | dur. 16’
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This piece is inspired by "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot and attempts to recreate its progression of poetic images and spaces, as well as their associated affects in music. Both the musical work and the original poem open with a quote from Dante’s Inferno spoken by Guido da Montefeltro in the 8th circle of hell. One of the quote’s functions is to situate both the original poem and this musical translation within the multi-layered architecture of Prufrock's internal world. Like the nine circles of hell, this musical landscape is characterised by a meaningful orientation. As one ventures deeper and deeper, the distance from external reality grows, and the soundscape becomes increasingly abstract. Closer to the surface, the listener can eavesdrop on the outside world, where sounds represent recognisable people, places, and things. As human voices grow in number and proximity, the line between interior and exterior space grows fainter and fainter.
Till human voices wake us and we drown was composed in completion of my master’s thesis at McGill University. It was performed and recorded by members of the McGill Percussion Ensemble.
Acousmatic Music
L’Infinie puissance des vagues (2022)
fixed media | dur. 35’
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L'Infinie puissance des vagues won the student prize of the international electroacoustic composition competition KLANG! 2023
The title and sound concept for this piece are drawn from a prose poem by my father. The translation of the full sentence is : “They laugh at each assault from the sea, playing at being scared, for they don't yet know the infinite power of the waves.” This movement is a labyrinth in sound. Doors open and close. Walls appear and disappear. Floors fall out. Ceilings cave in. Corridors are incessantly interwoven and unwound, evoking an ever-changing sonic cartography in the listener's imagination which will spread across the two following movements.
Large Ensemble
Giacometti, tâttonant (2020)
symphony orchestra | dur 5’
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This piece, originally called "Alter(n)ations," is intended to be one movement of a larger three-movement work entitled "Giacometti, tâtonnant." Alter(n)ations juxtaposes musical processes of alternation and alteration as applied to a sound mass. The work aims to emulate the perpetual hesitation and modification which characterize Alberto Giacometti’s sculpting technique. As the sound mass gradually accumulates, it hesitates and periodically rearranges its own contents with each reiteration, never abandoning itself completely but continually reimagining its configuration.
Alter(n)ations was composed for Soundmine 2020 and is performed here by the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Wim Henderickx.
Goûts égouttés… gouttes (2019)
brass ensemble | dur 9’
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Goûts égouttés… gouttes was awarded a BMI Student Composer Award in 2019.
This work was performed by an ensemble of McGill University brass students, conducted by Charles-Eric Fontaine, and recorded by Ben Barton Creelman in April of 2019.
Chamber Ensemble
Zoetrope VI: Draw / Blow (2023)
violin, cello, flute, clarinet, percussion, piano | dur 5’
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"Draw" and "blow" are terms used to refer to breathing in and out in harmonica playing. Zoetrope VI is centered around the breathing patterns of the harmonica player (in this case the percussionist). The piece follows the speed with which they inhale and exhale, gradually speeding up as more and more blemishes are added to the texture by the other instruments in the ensemble. Eventually, a spinning sound image briefly forms from the musical mass.
The "Zoetrope" pieces mix disparate elements in teeming masses to see if they can be made to sound as one. How does their coming together and falling apart enrich or erase the individual motifs' identities? And which of their qualities do the individual motifs contribute to the whole? The Zoetrope series is inspired by the pre-cinematic animation device the "Zoetrope" and emulates its achievement of cohesion through speed, varied imitation, and repetition.
Zoetrope V: Patina (2019)
two violins, flute, harp, percussion | dur. 7’
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"Patina" progresses from a volatile mass of percussive sounds towards its tainted reproduction: a flickering and multicolored mixture of noisy and pitched gestures. This work was premiered by Members of Ensemble Dal Niente as part of the 2019 DePaul/ Ensemble Dal Niente new music residency.
The "Zoetrope" pieces mix disparate elements in teeming masses to see if they can be made to sound as one. How does their coming together and falling apart enrich or erase the individual motifs' identities? And which of their qualities do the individual motifs contribute to the whole? The Zoetrope series is inspired by the pre-cinematic animation device the "Zoetrope" and emulates its achievement of cohesion through speed, varied imitation, and repetition.
Watch a video of the premiere here.
Zoetrope III: Weft (2020)
violin, bass clarinet, piano | duration 8’
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A thread, represented by the pitch E, runs through Weft. Three principal warps are woven over and under this central thread, creating the musical fabric. As surface rhythm accelerates, harmonic and textural complexity increases. Gradually, the weave is tightened, so that what once represented two loosely threaded minutes of music, occupies a single compact measure.
The "Zoetrope" pieces mix disparate elements in teeming masses to see if they can be made to sound as one. How does their coming together and falling apart enrich or erase the individual motifs' identities? And which of their qualities do the individual motifs contribute to the whole? The Zoetrope series is inspired by the pre-cinematic animation device the "Zoetrope" and emulates its achievement of cohesion through speed, varied imitation, and repetition.
Cent traces, sur de vastes plaines (2019)
two pianos | dur. 12’
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Cent traces, sur de vastes plaines was inspired by Anne Hébert's poem "Neige" (snow). Submerged in its image poétique, the music follows its emotional trajectory and attempts to embody it through a language of resonance, harmony, and temporalities. The opening five minutes contain three musical dreams composed using a collection of altered paraphrases from other piano pieces 'about' snow. These quotations appear the way characters in these dreams do: one might have an idea of who they represent from daily life (memory) even if they do not fully resemble that person. Over the course of the piece, the boundaries between dreams erode and the recurring characters' identities become increasingly distorted. Musical memories appear, disappear, and intermingle, culminating in a blurred mass and then a rupture.
This work was commissioned by the Luba Zuk Piano Duo Composition Competition and was awarded a BMI Student Composer Award in 2020. It is performed here by Paul Çelebi and Olivier Rabu.
Zoetrope IV: Juggle (2018)
string quartet | dur. 8’30”
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The Bozzini Quartet premiered this work as part of the 2018 Bozzini Lab in Vancouver BC. "Juggle" throws different combinations of repeated gestures into a revolving mass. As the quartet takes on more gestures than it has players (or more objects than the juggler has hands), the resultant sonic mass begins to shift with each toss.
The "Zoetrope" pieces mix together disparate elements in teeming masses to see if they can be made to sound as one. How does their coming together and falling apart enrich or erase the individual motifs' identities? And which of their qualities do the individual motifs contribute to the whole? The Zoetrope series is inspired by the pre-cinematic animation device the "Zoetrope" and emulates its achievement of cohesion through speed, varied imitation, and repetition.
Marées (2017)
alto saxophone, tenor saxophone | dur 7’
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This work was composed for the 2017 Laboratoire de Musique Contemporaine de Montréal and was premiered by Florence Garneau and Lacie Marchand.
Marées was composed in preparation for How Fast From Flight to Tomb and uses a similar discourse of creative-destructive waves crashing forward and then receding.