Mario Rodrigue

Alchimie gathers five pieces by Mario Rodrigue composed between 1985 and 1993, a compact disc of under forty minutes. Rodrigue describes his way of composing as standing in the present, the line between what has been realized and what might be, where the beginning of a work already holds its end.

Three of the pieces, Fiano porte (1985), Tilt (1986) and Qu'est-ce concert? (1987), were made in the studios of the Faculty of Music of the Université de Montréal with analog sampling: recording to tape and varying playback speed to build chords from bells, voices, springs, accordions and marbles rolling on different surfaces, then shaping them with active filters. For this disc he transferred the original tapes to digital multitrack, added newly sampled sounds and remixed them in 1993 at the Cinar studio with engineer Pierre Labbé, producing new definitive versions.

Tilt builds an imaginary pinball machine rather than processing a recorded one, and won the Grand Prize and first prize in the electroacoustic category at the 7th CBC National Competition for Young Composers in 1986. Cristaux liquides (1990), sound poetry on water in its solid and liquid states, was made with a Fairlight, an Akai S1000 and an Atari, and received a mention at Bourges in 1991. Le voyageur (1993) follows a space traveller who lands in the middle of downtown and moves on through space-time.

Born in Saint-Hyacinthe, Québec, in 1959, Rodrigue studied electroacoustic composition with Marcelle Deschênes and Francis Dhomont. From 1988 he created sound effects for animated films at the Cinar studio. He died in Saint-Hyacinthe in 2016.

CD in crystal case, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 9415, 1994.