Christian Bouchard

Fractures collects four acousmatic works that Christian Bouchard composed between 1997 and 2003, most of them in his Montréal studio. They draw on soundscapes bearing traces of human activity, assembled into music that alternates nervous energy with moments of suspension. The album was a finalist for the Prix Opus 2003-04.

Angle mort (2001-02) started from outdoor mass events (demonstrations, gatherings, parades, noisy bars) as a picture of antibodies fighting viruses, heard from the bed of a patient surrounded by machines. During its making a bike-riding friend, to whom the piece is dedicated, was for an instant in someone else’s blind spot, and the incident entered both form and content; the piece won the public’s prize at Métamorphoses 2002 in Brussels. Trois miniatures en suite (1997), his first electroacoustic work on digital media, is included as a prelude to what follows: three pieces of two to four minutes, each built from a single soundscape, among them an airplane, rolling Chinese balls and a brook, or the street seen from a parking meter. It won 1st prize in the Hugh Le Caine Award in 1998. In the two Parcelles (2002-03), Bouchard records the moments when the chaos of a sound environment suddenly organises itself into music, then asks those sounds to “pose” as for a painting, from rural calm to urban swarms. Parcelles 2 was commissioned by Réseaux des arts médiatiques.

Born in Quebec City in 1968, Bouchard studied with Yves Daoust at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, where he won a first prize in electroacoustic composition in 2000. He is a founding member of the live electroacoustic quartet Theresa Transistor.

CD in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 0474, 2004.