Stéphane Roy

Kaleidos draws together four works that Stéphane Roy composed between 1987 and 1994, the first of his albums on empreintes DIGITALes. Roy describes a gradual shift over those seven years: from an expressive will in the two earlier tape pieces to a growing concern with plasticity and form, and to the question of whether a specifically acousmatic way of writing exists, built on causal relations between musical units.

Ondes / Arborescences (1987) sets a violent, telluric discourse against long elegies of translucent harmony and voice-like melismas. Paysages intérieurs (1988) answers it with a sinuous, obsessive world broken by silences and sudden menacing events; it won 2nd prizes at the CBC competition for young composers and at NEWCOMP in Boston. Mimetismo (1992), commissioned by guitarist Arturo Parra, came out of improvisations guided by verbal instructions: the guitar gives up its role as soloist and imitates the tape, intensity and spectrum taking the place of pitch. Its electronic part was made with the SYTER system at the GRM, and it won 1st prize at the Luigi Russolo competition in 1992. Crystal Music, composed largely with Bill Schottstaedt’s Common Lisp Music at CCRMA, Stanford, in 1992-93, treats sound like glass, stretched and moulded in the furnace; ACREQ commissioned it for its 15th anniversary concert, and it won 1st prize at the Noroit-Léonce Petitot competition.

Born in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Québec, in 1959, Roy holds a doctorate in electroacoustic composition and a PhD in musicology from the Université de Montréal. His book on the analysis of electroacoustic music won the 2003-04 Prix Opus.

CD in crystal case, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 9630, 1996.