Strom et Necronomicon: créations canadiennes

Website(s) : http://www.huguesleclair.com / http://www.compogagnon.com

Biography

Geneviève D’Ortun is a classical and contemporary sax player (Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, University of Montreal) who’s passionate about creation, improvisation, world music, theater and literature. After traveling as a multi-instrumentalist, she performed (both on stage and on disk) and taught music in Acadia (Eastern Canada) for ten years. She currently lives in Montreal and divides her time between creation and performance on saxophone, teaching and singing.

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At the core of this project stands a desire to see both the performer’s and the composers’ sensibilities meet and unfold through collaboration. In her constant search for new sounds, Canadian saxophonist Genevieve D’Ortun explores multiple music styles ranging from jazz to contemporary and traditional musics. She believes in the encounter and in the clash between cultures as a means of developping her own musical language.

It is during a “Circlesongs” workshop led by Bobby McFerrin in 2014 that she is both moved and intrigued by the cyclical nature of cyclical Zimbabwean mbira music. Upon her return to Montreal, she describes the rhythmic and melodic feel of fluidity and continuity induced by this musical experience to composer Hugues Leclair. For him, these circular movements induce the image of a mighty river reminding him of Die Zeit Geht Nicht, a poem by the German writer Gottfried Keller : this text will become the main inspiration for Strom (“current” or “river” in German). The resulting twelve-minutes piece uses melodic loops based on new eleven-notes symmetric modes developed by the composer. These melodic cells fly in all registers on the alto and soprano saxes, supported by multiphonics pads.

As a literature and theater passionate, Genevieve D’Ortun is also interested in the transposition of words into musical sounds. In the course of a discussion with composer Olivier Gagnon about this concept of « sound poem », the idea of a work based on a written story rapidly becomes the cornerstone of a common creation project. The final choice of Olivier Gagnon to build a piece that uses the Necronomicon (a fictional grimoire that fantasy writer HP Lovecraft describes as a book of worship) as a starting point makes way to a fantastic world with accents reminiscent of Middle Eastern traditionnal music. In the eight-minutes resulting piece, soprano sax solo deftly mixes microtonality, top-tones and multiphonics, thus creating a mesmerizing melodic journey worthy of the Tales of the Arabian Nights.

In this musican’s artistic approach, there is an important place for the development of a musical aesthetic that reflects her philosophy of music and art. Whether through improvisation, composition or interpretation, the objective of creating an artistic event that respects the powers and the practical effects of sound vibrations is always present. It is with great pleasure that Geneviève D’Ortun works with other artists who share this vision to develop the contemporary repertoire for saxophone.