Yves Daoust

Voix gathers four works by Yves Daoust, three for fixed medium from 2002 to 2005 and a large piece for organ and electroacoustics, Chorals ornés (2007-08, 09). Across all of them run voices and time: a self-portrait on tape, the recorded baritone of an old friend, poems read aloud over Bach.

Chorals ornés is a rereading of the 14 chorales of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Orgelbüchlein (1708-14), each given a mood from “vivid joy” to “distress, despair”. Organ and tape run in parallel rather than fusing, an approach Daoust has followed since Valse (1981). Commissioned by Orgue et couleurs and Réseaux des arts médiatiques, it was premiered in Montréal in 2008 by the organist Régis Rousseau with the composer at the mixing desk, and won the Création de l’année award at the Prix Opus 2008-09. Some chorales carry poems by Matthieu Simard, Anouk Bereau, Jacinthe Dompierre and Gaston Miron. Rousseau’s part was recorded in surround in 2009 and 2011 on the Rudolf von Beckerath organ (1961) of the Immaculée-Conception church in Montréal, and the final mix is by Dominique Bassal.

About Time, commissioned by the CBC programme Outfront and NAISA, is a self-portrait made on the old reel-to-reel recorder Daoust had traded for a computer: he finds magnetic tape “infinitely more potent metaphorically than the hard drive”. In Objets trouvés, made at the IMEB in Bourges, a coffee grinder, an alarm clock, a pencil sharpener and music boxes are recorded with tiny microphones and only lightly transformed. Le temps fixé sets the present-day words of an aged opera singer against his baritone voice recorded at its peak.

Born in Longueuil, Québec, in 1946, Yves Daoust studied in Montréal and in Paris with Gilbert Amy, then trained at the GMEB in Bourges from 1973 to 1975. He worked as a sound designer at the National Film Board, taught electroacoustic composition at the conservatories of Québec City and Montréal until 2011, and helped found ACREQ in 1978. He received the Prix Serge-Garant in 2009.

DVD-Audio in OGplus, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 11113, 2011.