Jean-Luc Guionnet composes for the Le Grand Groupe Régional d'Improvisation Libérée (GGRIL) directed by bassist Éric Normand, with an 11-piece ensemble recording in the studio for a work of tension and release through fitful sections that explores contrast and unison, space and contraction, guided by a wonderful sense of mystery and surprise.
Label: Tour de Bras / Circum-Disc Catalog ID: TDB9046cd / microcidi018 Squidco Product Code: 29987
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2020 Country: Canada Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold Recorded at Coop Paradis, in Rimouski, Quebec, Canada, between March 31st, and April 2nd, 2019, by Antoine Letourneau-Berger.
"While my approach to writing is entirely charged with the experience of the stage, with the tension inherent in improvisation, I am not trying to reproduce any musical result to which these practices have brought me. On the contrary, my attention is entirely focused on the powers of writing. In other words, I don't use the sheet music to ask others to play music that I already play myself in other settings. I also don't use it to make up an improvisation. I use it to push the stop of form as far as possible through writing in all its forms including verbal. As a result, orchestras made up of musicians with atypical backgrounds, [like the GGRIL], are for me privileged partners in research and experimentation. "-Jean-Luc Guionnet (via Google translater)
"After Evan Parker, Xavier Charles, John Butcher and Ingrid Laubrock, the bassist Éric Normand - great manitou of the Rimouski label Tour de bras, among other things - has recruited the Lyon saxophonist Jean-Luc Guionnet, known in particular for his participation in the free-improvisation quintet Hubbub, to lead his Grand Groupe Régional d'Improvisation Libérée, a formation of variable numbers and geometry set up by Normand, through one of his compositions. Of course, this group gives pride of place to improvisation. By his own admission, Guionnet has found in the GGRIL an orchestra made up of musicians with atypical backgrounds, privileged partners for research and experimentation. In their company, he pushes his explorations of form as far as possible, and the result is quite fascinating, with just the right amount of tension and suspension points to bring out the various instruments. The start is slow, there are many silences. The music, scattered, almost whispered at times, unfolds without any rush. Mysterious atmospheres, parsimonious dissonances, with sometimes sound bursts where the volume and energy level rise a little. Among the 11 musicians in the studio is the unfortunate Rémy Bélanger de Beauport, one of the five victims of the sinister perpetrator of the sword attacks in Quebec City on October 31, and who almost lost an index finger in the incident. A recording that deserves to be tamed into revealing its secrets."-Michel Rondeau, Pan360