Francis Dhomont

… et Autres Utopies gathers five works by Francis Dhomont, composed or revised between 1989 and 2005, mostly in his Montréal studio. He calls them utopias in the literal sense of ou-topos, sounds that belong to no place, and describes them as fantasies to hear with eyes closed: sound in space, mankind’s revolt against its own nature, light, a symbolic journey and exaltation.

Here and There (2003), commissioned by NAISA in Toronto, is a study of sound moving in three-dimensional space, originally for 8 channels and heard here in a stereo reduction; it won 1st prize at the Pierre Schaeffer competition in Pescara in 2005. Je te salue, vieil océan! sets excerpts from Lautréamont’s Les chants de Maldoror, read by Marc-Henri Boisse, against a metaphorical ocean of treated and synthesized sound; first made at the IMEB in Bourges in 1998, it was completely reworked between 2000 and 2004.

Chroniques de la lumière (1989, 2005), dedicated to Annette Vande Gorne and based on a concept by the visual artist Luc Courchesne, moves in three movements from slow to fast, with many sounds made on the Ina-GRM’s SYTER system; Météores appears in a slightly revised 2005 version. Voyage-miroir (2004), for Robert Normandeau, mirrors the 45-minute … mourir un peu: its ten movements return in reverse order at a third of their length. Corps et âme (2001-02), written for the magazine Sonopsys, was one of five 1st prizes at the ZKM’s Short Cuts: Beauty competition in 2006.

Born in Paris in 1926, Dhomont studied with Charles Koechlin and Nadia Boulanger and has written only for fixed media since 1963. He taught at the Université de Montréal from 1980 to 1996 and has lived in Avignon since 2004. The album was a Prix Opus finalist for disc of the year 2006-07.

CD in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 0682, 2006.