Robert Normandeau

Dômes gathers five works by Robert Normandeau made between 2005 and 2014, a period in which he composed a cycle of immersive music for domes of loudspeakers. Two pieces here were written for the Klangdom of the ZKM in Karlsruhe, and all are presented in stereo versions finalised in 2014 or, for La part des anges, a stereo reduction of its 2012 version.

La part des anges takes its title from the share of aging spirits that evaporates through the barrel: Normandeau distils a cappella songs from many cultures and periods, keeping their timbre and only the volatile part of their essence. Made during a ZKM residency that followed his Giga-Hertz-Preis, it received an Honorable Mention at Musica Nova 2012. Kuppel (Dome), commissioned by the ZKM and first played on its Klangdom of 43 speakers, uses three recordings from a two-month stay in Karlsruhe in 2005: the quiet city trams, the church chime of the Marktplatz and a squeaking door next to the studio.

Two works come from the theatre of Brigitte Haentjens. Pluies noires grew from music for Sarah Kane’s Blasted, with baritone saxophone by Ida Toninato, and Hamlet-Machine without Actors recomposes the score for Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine, using electronic sounds for the first time in years. Baobabs adapts his 1995 Le renard et la rose, with its Little Prince themes, for four voices, Stéphanie Lessard, Marie-Annick Béliveau, Michiel Schrey and Pierre-Étienne Bergeron, and the six percussionists of Sixtrum, recorded live in Montréal in 2013; it won first prize for mixed music at Musica Nova 2013.

Born in Quebec City in 1955, Normandeau completed the first DMus in electroacoustic composition at the Université de Montréal in 1992 and has taught there since 1999, where he leads the GRIS spatialization research group.

CD in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 14128, 2014.