Pierre-Alexandre Tremblay

La Marée brings together five mixed works by Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, composed between 2008 and 2013 in his studio and at the University of Huddersfield. In each, a soloist faces processing, an interactive system and fixed sounds, a relationship the composer describes as a dialogue of power games between performer and loudspeaker, as fragile as sandcastles facing the patience of the elements. Each piece is dedicated to its performer, and the recordings were made between 2011 and 2013 and mixed by Tremblay in Huddersfield. The album received the Opus Prize for album of the year 2013-14.

Sarah Nicolls plays two works. Un clou, son marteau, et le béton, for piano, which she commissioned, takes the bullfight as an allegory of life and quotes Marcel Pagnol. Le tombeau des fondeurs, dedicated to Messiaen, Stravinsky, Varèse “and other casters”, was commissioned by Pierre Malbos for the Baschet-Malbos piano he builds and maintains, and recorded at Studio 4’33” in Ivry-sur-Seine; the image behind it is the bell caster who gives a sound where timbre and pitch are one.

La rupture inéluctable, four meditations on fragile balance, was commissioned by the bass clarinettist Heather Roche. Mono no aware, for Jean-François Laporte and his Babel table, starts from the making of tea and quotes Okakura Kakuzō’s The Book of Tea. Still, Again is a short chamber opera on waiting in vain, written for the soprano Peyee Chen.

Born in Montréal in 1975, Tremblay is a composer and performer on bass guitar and electronics, working across electroacoustic music, contemporary jazz, mixed and improvised music. He studied composition with Marcelle Deschênes and Jonty Harrison among others, and is Professor of Composition and Improvisation at the University of Huddersfield.

2CD in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 13123/124, 2013.