yannick guédon
fr | en
pause
2010
  • Deborah Walker
  • Jean-Brice Godet
  • Patrice Soletti
  • Philippe Cornus
  • Yannick Guédon
  • cello
  • clarinet
  • electric and acoustic guitars
  • vibraphone, timpani
  • voice

Pause is a continuation of the issues explored in the programme Soupir, namely the feelings of inner pulse and time, the appreciation of these different feelings and the mistakes it could generate.
The three parts which make up Soupir are based on written scores to be performed in strict synchronicity, nevertheless additional constraints make them impossible to achieve effectively.
Pause opts for the opposite direction as it avoids the prerequisite of a formal partition.
It is more about generating musical processes from simple materials which challenge the musicians not to play at the same moment or on the same beat.
In fact, Pause is formed of five sequences, each of them focuses on the exploration of the musician himself, his mood, his thymos, and of course, his own feeling of rhythm.

The first sequence is about playing a continuous blowing sound allowing no silences.
The main constraint is that only one single performer must play.
If he or she stops, not giving any cues for that, another performer should follow.
If two performers start together, they have to stop to let another musician play.

The second sequence is about shortening a block of music to its tiniest element.

The third is an attempt to reach the same pitch by taking microtonal steps but never beginning or finishing together.

The fourth asks the musicians to make a chord together.
However, as they face a member of the circular audience and are not allowed any sonorous cues, this process generates a scattering of sounds amongst long periods of silence.

In the last sequence, the musicians must choose one sound corresponding to the right foot, and another corresponding to the left. The musicians then have to imagine their way to walk out the venue and play this imagined walk with the two sounds.
After that, they do walk out, come back and play the real 'musical' path they have walked.
The performers have to face the impossibility of remembering exactly the number of steps and the exact pace of their actual walk.


In each sequence, one musician has a real pause, not playing for the whole sequence and just standing or sitting among the others and listening.

___________________________________
production | ensemble thymes
with the kind support of
Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles Languedoc-Roussillon
Conseil Général de l'Hérault
the city of Montpellier

kind acknowledgments to
Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers and Baignoire-Montpellier

in co-operation with the National Orchestra of Montpellier for the use of the timpani