Jacques Tremblay

Chroniques d’une Séduction collects three fixed-medium works by Jacques Tremblay, realized between 1997 and 2004 in his Montréal studio. The theme running through all three is otherness: the noisy neighbour on his phone, the radio filtering through the ceiling, voices in languages he cannot understand, which become rhythm and movement once their meaning drops away.

Espresso espressivo (2003-04), commissioned by Réseaux des arts médiatiques, puts coffee under pressure, from the single bean to the café as a meeting place, with nods to the coffee cantata of JS Bach and to Gainsbourg. L’énigme anima sets two Jungian characters against each other: Persona, played by guitar sounds, and Anima, given the voice of a countertenor. First premiered by ACREQ in 1997 as Faux lot de flots, it received its final title after being repaired and revised in 2001.

The centre of the album is Empathies entropiques (1998-2001), a 47-minute work dedicated to Yves Daoust, in eight sections from La petite Camille to Haïti troubadour. Each is a snapshot of an encounter with a person of a different cultural background, built from recorded voices in Russian, Italian, Creole, English, Arabic, African languages and an invented tongue. Tremblay took his lead from Martin Buber’s Je et Tu and its philosophy of meeting; the piece premiered at Espace GO in Montréal in 2001.

Born in Jonquière, Québec, in 1962, Tremblay is a composer and classical guitarist with first prizes from the conservatories of Montréal and Lyon. He works across instrumental, mixed and purely electroacoustic music. The album was a Prix Opus finalist for disc of the year 2008-09.

CD in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 0897, 2008.