Le guitariste Arturo Parra a lancé il y a déjà quelque temps le disque Parr(A)cousmatique (Empreintes Digitales) où il se livre à un exercice inusité qui consiste à composer une partie de guitare sur des musiques pour bandes pouvant être écoutées de façon indépendante. Les bandes sont de Stéphane Roy, Mauricio Bejarano, Francis Dhomont, Gilles Gobeil et Robert Normandeau. On a ici le meilleur de ce que peut offrir la musique mixte: une partie électroacoustique réalisée par quelques-uns des meilleurs compositeurs du genre et une partie instrumentale composée par un virtuose qui connaît toutes les possibilités de son instrument. Du grand art.

On October 10, 2002, at the UNESCO salle-cinema (Paris), Vivienne Spiteri will present a solo concert of electroacoustic and mixed works featuring scores and tapes by Kaija Saariaho, Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux, Pierre Schaeffer, John Cage and a Colin Roche premiere.

Déluge presents three new 2002 fall releases. First, on Saccacomie, four musicians remix a classic country composition by Rodrigue Frappier. Also, Raphaël Simard aka Le Packageur, proposes his last opus, Rond Rond. Finally, A_dontigny (one half of morceaux_de_machines) offers a mad deconstruction of Québec pop music with On est 7 millions, faut s’sampler!.

There is a recent trend in electroacoustic music where instrumentalists with improvisational or compositional skills are collaborating with studio-based electroacoustic composers in the creation of works. Lori Freedman, Randy Raine-Reusch, and Abbie Conant are a few of names that come to mind. Another example is Colombian-Canadian guitarist Arturo Parra who collaborates on this recording with a choice group of Montréal acousmatic composers — Francis Dhomont, Stéphane Roy, Gilles Gobeil, Robert Normandeau, and from Colombia, Mauricio Bejarano.

The most successful of these collaborations in my opinion are those with Dhomont, Normandeau and Gobeil. The intense energy of Parra’s playing is well supported by those artists’ sensitive control of tension and release. They also work because the guitar and the studio parts find frequent points of intersection and dialogue. The Roy piece felt to me that the studio component was on a different plane than the guitar, although to his credit, I found the sounds Roy created to be the most original.

Cooperative efforts such as the one lead here by Parra are long overdue — the synthesis of the two encroaches on old habits and gives acousmatic music a new zest. It is nice to hear a melodic line weaving in and out of voluminous washes and thick stabs, for instance, or hearing the acousmatic component hold the main pitch interest while the guitar screeches and grinds around it. In short, a bold spark on my radar screen. I look forward to similar explorations in the years ahead instigated by Parra and others.

Cinéma pour l’oreille has released Consciously Unconscious. Unconsciously Conscious. by Zbigniew Karkowski and Train de nuit (Noord 3-683) by Lionel Marchetti.

The 3rd Biennale de Montréal (September 27 to November 3, 2002) pays tribute to Betty Goodwin, Montréal artist who signs the cover of the CD Les méandres du rêve by Serge Arcuri.