The Squid's Ear Magazine


Mayas, Magda / Pierre-Yves Martel / Eric Normand: Boule-spiel (Tour de Bras)

Quebec improvisers Pierre-Yves Martel on Viola da Gamba, objects, and feedback, Eric Normand on electric bass and snare drum, are joined by Berlin pianist Magda Mayas for two extended works of free improvisation, manipulating and contorting strings with an electroacoustic edge, dark ruminations of exquisite detail, patience, and adroit interaction.
 

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Personnel:



Magda Mayas-piano

Pierre-Yves Martel-Viola da Gamba, objects, feedback

Eric Normand-electric bass, snare drum


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Label: Tour de Bras
Catalog ID: TDB9025cd
Squidco Product Code: 25256

Format: CDR
Condition: New
Released: 2017
Country: France
Packaging: Plastic Gatefold sleeve with fold-over insert
Recorded at Salle Desjardins-Telus, in Rimouski, Quebec, Canada, on November 17th, 2013, by Robin Servant

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"So many strings - almost everything you can imagine done to a string, done. (And then anomalously 3⁄4 way through the second piece - a bell.) This grundgy mid-range recording is everywhere distortion. Despite Pierre-Yve's precise plucking and smooth bow - the air of the music is noisy, (is that amps hissing)?

Eric's guitar growls through a snare. Magda's sound board - a space for hittings, rubbings, pluckings, scrapings, cries and whispers.

There is a searching ongoingness, a moving forward from one state to another. 6 minutes into track 1 emerges a compelling coherence - for a few minutes banded. After, they revert to dark, brooding intentional polyphony.

When a child, I experienced ambiguous nightmares I described as oscillating between the rough and the smooth. The smooth was excruciating not because it was unpleasant, but because you knew it would end to be replaced by the rough.

This is compelling, nightmarish music."-Jim Denley (Sydney, 2014)


Artist Biographies

"Magda Mayas, born 1979, is a pianist living in Berlin. Developing a vocabulary utilizing both the inside as well as the exterior parts of the piano, using preparations and objects, she explores textural, linear and fast moving sound collage.

Alongside the piano, Mayas has recently been performing on a Clavinet/Pianet, an electric piano from the 60s with strings and metal chimes, where she engages with noise and more visceral sound material, equally extending the instrumental sound palette using extended techniques and devices.Mayas performs internationally solo and in collaboration with a large number of musicians and composers.Current projects are "Spill", a duo with drummer Tony Buck, a duo with Christine Abdelnour (sax) and "Great Waitress", a trio with Monika Brooks (acc) and Laura Altman (cl).

She is currently undertaking Phd studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden and investigating extended instrumental techniques, spectral music and psychoacoustics in an improvised music context.

Since 2013 she has also been producing radio pieces for ABC Australia and Deutschlandradio Kultur and has released 20 CDS to date.

Magda Mayas has performed and toured in Europe, the USA, Australia, Mexico and Lebanon and collaborated with many leading figures in improvisation and composers such as John Butcher, Andy Moor, Zeena Parkins, Joelle Leandre, Paul Lovens, Ikue Mori, Phill Niblock, Peter Evans, Andrea Neumann and Axel Dörner. She has performed at festivals and exhibitions such as Maerz Musik (2012,2015), Documenta (2012) or the Berlin Biennale ( 2014)."

-Magda Mayas Website (https://magdamayas.jimdo.com/bio-cv/)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Pierre-Yves Martel. Born Vanier, Ontario, Canada, 1979. Residence: Montréal, Québec. Composer, Performer (viola da gamba, double bass, objects)

Following a unique artistic path, Pierre-Yves Martel is constantly renewing his musical identity and practice. Though a instrumentalist, he identifies himself first and foremost as a sound artist whose work oscillates between perpetual research and experimentation. It is in this spirit that he has revisited the viola da gamba, utilizing this traditional instrument in new contexts and thus reengaging it with the contemporary world. Having created an authentic musical language through non-conventional techniques and instrumental preparations, he also works outside of instrumental music altogether, using a variety of objects rife with new sonic possibilities, from contact-mics and speakers to motors, wheels, surfaces and textures."

-ActuelleCD (http://www.actuellecd.com/en/bio/martel_pi/)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Eric Normand is an improviser, bassist, instrument designer, composer, songwriter, singer and record and concert producer. He defines himself as an epidisciplinary musician, a free electron driven by its yearning for meetings. As an improviser, he develop a personal and radical playing on a homemade electric bass equipped with mics and objects feedbacking and vibrating in small electronic devices, creating electric flux interrupted by the instrumental gesture. With this set, he prefer to play duets, with Jim Denley (flute and sax), Philippe Lauzier (bass clarinet and sax), Sébastien Cirotteau (trumpet), Pierre-Yves Martel (viola de gamba and electronic), Jean-Luc Guionnet (saxophone), in addition of several spontaneous encounters.

He also play in bands involved in a more specific musical genre as danced poetry with BABABA, instrumental theatre with Le Veau/ The Veal, songs with Les Pitounes and Éric Normand Chante and folk music with The Surruralits and RRRRoyal Canadian Free Form Folk Experience. Interested in collective creation and orchestral improvisation, he lead for seven years the GGRIL, a 15 pieces band that have worked with composers such as Evan Parker, Jean Derome, Robert Marcel Lepage and Michael Fischer. His music has been programmed by or performed in several festivals in Canada , Australia and Europe. It have also been broadcasted by Radio-Canada, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC, Radio-Grenouille, and several college radio stations."

-Eric Normand 3/13/2024

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Track Listing:



1. Lancer 33:44

2. Spiegelbildauflosung 14:08

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Free Improvisation
Musique Actuelle
European Improvisation and Experimental Forms
Trio Recordings
Stringed Instruments
Canadian Composition & Improvisation
Piano Trio (Piano Bass Drums)

Search for other titles on the label:
Tour de Bras.


Recommended & Related Releases:
Other Recommended Releases:
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II
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