Yves Daoust

Docu-Fictions sets side by side two lines that run through the work of Yves Daoust since his first pieces: the audio documentary, and the rereading of the classical repertoire through contemporary sound environments. The five tracks date from 1995 to 2021 and open with a phrase by Alain Savouret on rebuilding a “more legible false reality” from separate elements.

Lily (2011-12) is built from the confidences of a courtesan who became a friend of the composer, voiced by the actress Simone Chartrand. The disc includes it twice: as a fixed-medium piece, and in the mixed version for violin, accordion and tape completed in 2018 at the request of Joseph Petric, recorded with Lynn Kuo in 2021. The material was also staged by Jean Asselin and Omnibus in 2013. Intermède grew from Daoust's three-minute segment of the Symphonie du millénaire, a collective work by 19 composers premiered in 2000 outside the Saint-Joseph Oratory in Montréal, with bells and the chant Ave Maris Stella.

Impromptu 2 (1995), for piano, synthesizer and tape, takes all its material from Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu op. 66, apart from a brief nod to Schumann; it is played by Brigitte Poulin and David Cronkite. Calme chaos (2011-12), titled after Sandro Veronesi's novel Caos calmo, confronts the Nouvel ensemble moderne under Lorraine Vaillancourt with more than a thousand fragments of each musician's classical repertoire, a reflection on collective amnesia prefaced by Kundera and Muray. The disc was a finalist for album of the year at the Prix Opus 2022-23.

Born in Longueuil, Québec, in 1946, Daoust studied with Gilbert Amy in Paris and trained at the GMEB in Bourges. He taught electroacoustic composition at the Québec conservatories until 2011, helped found ACREQ, and received the Prix Serge-Garant in 2009.

CD in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 22182, 2022.