Portrait: Yves Daoust

Born in 1946 in Longueuil, near Montréal (Canada), Yves Daoust started the piano at a young age. He began to produce sound tracks in his teens for amateur stage productions. At age 21 he was admitted at the Montréal Music Conservatory, in piano. Two years later he quit, turning to composition and studying with Gilles Tremblay. His discovery of musique concrète in the early 1970s made him realize that he had already done something similar. He learned the trades of film music and sound production with Maurice Blackburn and Norman McLaren at the National Film Board of Canada and spent two years at the GMEB in Bourges to complete his initiation to electroacoustics. Back in 1976 he worked a few years for the NFB.

His first real tape music piece was completed in 1979, at which time he quit the Board to become one of Quebec’s most important composer and promoter of electroacoustic music. He co-founded the ACREQ (an association for electroacoustic research) in 1978, assuming the duties of president for ten years. He teaches electroacoustic composition at the Quebec Music and Drama Conservatory.

Daoust’s music touches tape music, instrument and tape, live electroacoustics, and instrumental film music. His dreamy textures and sense of the narrative compensate for the rather classical plasticity of his sonic sculptures. His first tape composition, Quatuor, was awarded the Euphonie d’Or by the Bourges Festival in 1993. An influential teacher, Daoust left his mark on many younger Quebec composers such as Ned Bouhalassa and Daniel Leduc. His first album, Anecdotes, was released in 1991 on empreintes DIGITALes. A second, Musiques naïves, followed in 1998, and a third, Bruits, in 2001.