-11, avenue du Midi (15'20 - 1996), for 2 track tape

Listen to an excerpt (in mp3 format ) :    11, avenue du Midi (extr.: the bathroom)

Load an excerpt (in Real Audio format ) :    11, avenue du Midi (extr.: the bathroom)

Description :

Sometime ago, my parents had to leave the house in which they had lived for more than thirty years. For me, this proved to be the occasion for a last visit to the sites of my childhood, loaded woth old emotions. As if by coincidence, I discovered at this time Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu..

The work consists of a succession of short pieces, organized in the form of a spatial course, which is lso the unfolding of a day. At the same time, each piece corresponds to a particular age, from my youngest childhhod to the beginning of adolescence : my bedroom (awakening, the rain, cozyness); the bathroom (the sound of water, ermerging) ; the stairs (leaping down jubilantly) ; the garden (children's games) ; the basement (rehearsal with my pop group). Recordings made on the spot, some going back as far as 1972 (the rehearsal), others made more recently, are confronted with other sound sources, soem realistic, some not. This involves the listener in an ambiguity between a resalistic, quasi narrative mode and a more abstract mode, emphasizing sound phenomena which would otherwise be imperceptible. A place, an object, can in some way crystallize time - the time, captured on tape, taken to unwind the sounds it has produces, and also the time of our sensations at these precise moments.

Beyond vain nostalgia, this pieces consists both of a journey through time and of the acceptance of time's passing.

11, avenue du Midi is dedicated to my parents.

Composed at La Muse en Circuit and Studio Ligys, as tthe prize for the second competition of radiophonic creation.

 

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