Martin Bédard, Marie-Hélène Breault

Lames de Fond brings together four works by the Québec composer Martin Bédard, realized in his studios in Montréal and Longueuil between 2012 and 2021. Two of them were co-written with the flutist Marie-Hélène Breault and commissioned by E27, the Québec City concert producer she directed from 2008 to 2013. Bédard’s “sound architectures” apply the grammar of film editing to acousmatic music, the subject of his 2012 doctoral thesis.

Honey (Architectures From Silence No. 1) (2020-21) takes the slow transformation of pollen and nectar into honey as its model, moving from scattered, almost volatile material towards densification and crystallization. It won 1st prize in the fixed medium category at Musica Nova 2023 in Prague. In 𝄆 Extensio:Warm:Up 𝄇 (2015-17), for flute, processing and 8-channel fixed medium, a recomposed flute passes through cycles of exercises, wrapped in a largely synthesized electroacoustic part; Breault plays the flute.

Replica (2012-13) is built mostly from old recordings of Breault and new flute material, around the motto “Eadem mutata resurgo”. It received a mention at the Métamorphoses competition in 2014 and 3rd prize at the Iannis Xenakis competition in 2017. Kissland (2016) starts from pareidolia, the tendency to see faces in clouds or rocks, and applies it to listening and to the encounter with another person; it earned an honourable mention at the 9th Destellos competition.

Bédard was born in Quebec City in 1970 and teaches at the Université de Montréal and the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal. Breault, born in Quebec City in 1977, specializes in music of the 20th and 21st centuries, with doctorates from the Université de Montréal, one of them on the flute works in Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Samstag aus Licht. The album was a finalist for disc of the year at the Prix Opus 2022-23.

CD in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 22178, 2022.