Pierre-Alexandre Tremblay, Stefan Schneider

La Rage is a single 49-minute work by Pierre Alexandre Tremblay for drum kit, processing, interactive processing and 8-channel fixed medium, composed over eighteen months in 2004-05 and performed by Stefan Schneider. It is a reading of the novel La rage (1989) by Louis Hamelin, and the composer dedicates it to “all the clean-cut punks”.

The title plays on the two meanings of the French word, rage and rabies: a land expropriated for “flying steel”, a people cut off from its identity, a youth worn out by cynicism, and on the other side a tiny germ, a slow incubation and a final burst of hatred. The piece unfolds in four large movements, Les jeux sont faits, Brûlé, Incubation and La rage, each a chain of short scenes with titles such as le squat, oiseaux de fer, Œdipe en banlieue, haine en Larsen and, at the end, épilogue : pas d'avenir. The drum part is written for a free jazz musician.

Realized at the Université de Montréal studios and in Tremblay's own studio, the work premiered in Montréal in March 2005 after a week of on-site rehearsals; the drums were recorded that June. It was a finalist at Bourges in 2007, and the concert built around it won the Prix Opus 2005-06 for best concert in electroacoustic music.

Born in Montréal in 1975, Tremblay is a composer, bass guitarist and electronic performer working between electroacoustic music, contemporary jazz and improvisation; he studied with Marcelle Deschênes and Jonty Harrison and teaches at the University of Huddersfield. Schneider, born in Ottawa in 1976, studied jazz at McGill and has played with Bell Orchestre and recorded with Amon Tobin.

DVD-Audio in OGplus, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 0999, 2009.