Ensemble Cairn

Label Kairos

2019

Portulan: thus were called the ancient sea atlases used from the 13th century onward, marking out coastlines and harbours, indicating currents and depths. Portulan: a cycle of chamber music pieces by Tristan Murail, written for eight instruments (flute, clarinet, French horn, piano, percussions, violin, viola, cello). In this cycle, each piece uses a unique combination of instruments within the ensemble.

 Through this album, Ensemble Cairn celebrates its years of companionship with the composer Tristan Murail. The fifth piece of the Paludes, for instance, had been specifically commissioned by Ensemble Cairn and premiered during the Musica festival in October 2010.

“ [This cycle] is also a form of autobiography, written in metaphors: each piece refers to something – a place, a journey, a book, an aesthetic experience – of significant importance to me. Portulan, in itself, is the title of a poetry book written by my father, which had made a strong impression on me as an adolescent.” Tristan Murail

Ensemble Cairn

label Æon

2017

The music is lucid. A lively, spirited, intense folding and unfolding, pointillist and coruscant matter, embracing both the idea and its contradiction - sensual, droll, dancing,  abyssal depths arriving like sudden gusts of air. Forward motion and standstill - are they the same thing ? The music slaps, pinches, bites, hushes, hisses. A body both precise and untameable.

Gerard Pesson revitalizes here what could (already) be his own classicism (Carmagnole); he draws a fine mustache on Mozart\'s portrait - with the latter\'s immediate approval (Transformations fo the Menuet K. 355); Under Opalka\'s unrelenting and deserving eye, he drives his own language into such corners that it seems transformed, and probably is (Blanc Mérité); his language then branches out and scintillates in Prous (Ne pas oublier le coq rouge dans le jour craquelé), inhabits Perec\'s geometry (Neige bagatelle), and strips itself bare in the \"children\'s corner\" (Musica Ficta).

GONE

Jérôme Combier

Ensemble Cairn

Label Aeon

2016

Some musical pieces can be affirmative or triumphant. Others suggest distance, a soft journey towards the wilderness. Jérôme Combier is of this wanderer's race. His music immerses the spectator in a profound and diluted atmosphere, dense of multiple and ghostly appartitions that free the imagination. Here and there, a lign of shadows interferes with real voices, as if born out of nothingness. Combier's music destroys the reference points for height, the distinction between sound, breath and rubbing. Trenched by electronic music, his work is closely connected to rains of sand, to rumors of the wind...

Electronic music has this function : it eats away at the sound produced by the instruments, it dilutes harmonies and scales in soft saturation, in texture-filled sound. The pieces gathered in this album immerse us in diaphanous light. They are served by the very best of today's music.

FURIA

Raphaël Cendo

Ensemble Cairn – Guillaume Bourgogne

Label Aeon

2012

Raphaël Cendo’s music catches us unguarded or, more precisely, captivates all our senses. His biography is a legend. After graduating from the National Conservatory of Paris, the jury dared not give him all the credit he deserved. The institution awarded him second prize, but his music already had in it to be first. Long since, had he turned his back to his peers, choosing a side road at the risk of being misunderstood. He established his radical thinking, invented saturation. The principle underlining his music is “to defeat limits thanks to an excess of energy”: to liberate the energy of the instruments, to include the performer’s body in the process of composition, enabling the concert to shift from a simple, disembodied performance to a primal musical act, a sound ritual where the performer takes on an almost religious role. This music requires immense virtuosity. Sound is utterly transformed. This music is not about predicting but about getting lost, it does not require organization, but to find a way through unstable, primitive and unknown grounds; for the composer, but also for the performer, and for the listener.

LIEU & NON-LIEUX

Thierry Blondeau

Ensemble Cairn – Guillaume Bourgogne

Label Aeon

2009

Thierry Blondeau's music can be described as an audible construction of acoustical, spatial and instrumental data. These preoccupations have brought him to create "in situ" or interactive events, alongside his concert preformances.
Since 2000, Thierry Blondeau also creates works for musicians of all levels, so that musically demanding creations are learnt from the beginning of the learning process.
The three works recorded on this disc are a cycle. Non-Lieu I, a guitar solo, Non-Lieu II a cello and clarinet duet, Lieu I a work for 9 instruments. Non-Lieu III should have been a trio for guitar, clarinet and cello. This trio finally comes out in Lieu I, creating a group placed around the public, a play within a play.

VIES SILENCIEUSES

Jérôme Combier

Ensemble Cairn – Guillaume Bourgogne

Label Aeon

2007

Vies silencieuses (Silent lives) is closely linked to the Villa Médicis in Rome for which I conceived this project in 2003 and where I gave it its definitive form between 2004 and 2006. These ‘lives’ were inspired above all by the pictural universes of several very different artists. Yet I believe I recognised in each of them something which spoke to me directly and echoed my preoccupations as a composer – what I might term patience, ‘the frequentation of the world’, appearance and effacement.

PAYS DE VENT

Jérôme Combier

Ensemble Cairn – Guillaume Bourgogne

Label Motus

2005

Jérôme Combier’s work shows an obstinate and secret will to maintain a state of tension, be it latent or blatant, and to continuously resurrect a musical gesture that cannot decide between tear and gentle touch. As when playing the biwa, where the musician violently plucks the strings of his lute to provoke, within an instant, silky and soothing sounds…

" Ainsi, ta vie, une rupture, fut comme celle de tout créateur - et il y en a peu - difficile à porter mais lumineuse comme la poétique mallarméenne dans son vouloir. Écrire était pour toi faire l'épreuve de la limite et celle-ci, faisant seuil avec l'inconnu, la tâche n'était pas aisée. Tes exigences, ton invention, ta vive curiosité, ta puissance de travail laissaient poindre l'oeuvre que tu portais; celle que tu nous lègues, tel un filigrane, laisse présager ce qui, pli selon pli, se serait, j'en suis sûr, dévoilé comme une grande oeuvre." 

Hacène Larbi

Alexandre Tissier est né le 15 février 1970 à Boulogne sur Seine