Elsa Justel

Mâts collects eight works that Elsa Justel composed between 1996 and 2004, nearly 80 minutes of music made in her Paris studio and in studios in Bourges, Barcelona, Berlin and Nevers, most of them on commission. She conceived the disc as a tribute to the people who shaped her musical thinking, from her teachers in Argentina to Horacio Vaggione, who writes the booklet essay.

The title piece (1999), realized at the GRM and commissioned with the Ina-GRM, is built from traditional instruments: the erkencho, an Andean horn made from a bull’s horn, the rain stick, and small Chinese drums and bamboos. Du libe tu? (1996), written for the anniversary of Pierre Schaeffer’s death, quotes his voice from the Ina archives and plays on the title of his Bidule en ut. Alba Sud (1997-98), dedicated to Beatriz Ferreyra, is a homage to musique concrète, while Gwerz (2002) draws on the old stones of the Tower of Crest and their stories of stonecutters and prisoners.

Midi de sable (2000) is the one mixed work, for alto, tenor, basset and contrabass recorders played by Joan Izquierdo. Puntos, comas y refritos (2002), an 8-channel commission from the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, recycles electroacoustic clichés such as birds, water and footsteps with humour. Bastet (2004) imagines the cat deity trapped inside a piano, with sounds from strings, guitar and snare drum rubbed, scratched and hit; it won the Prix Ton Bruynèl in 2005.

Born in Mar del Plata in 1944, Justel studied composition in Rosario and electroacoustic music in Buenos Aires with José Maranzano and Francisco Kröpfl. She moved to France in 1988 and took a doctorate at the Université de Paris VIII under Vaggione.

CD in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 0785, 2007.