Piano Seul

Les pièces du Piano seul ont été composées comme des improvisations à l’intérieur de structures, de la musique libre qui trace son chemin au travers de clôtures et de voies tracées… Ceux qui ont apprécié Cycloides, son plus récent disque publié par GD Stereo (http://gdstereo.com/recordings/gd023-jocelyn-robert-cycloides)
seront en terrain connu.

The pieces on Piano Seul have all been written in this context and feature improvisation within structures, free music making its way through fences and pre-drawn roads… Those who enjoyed his Cycloides cd, released last year on GD Stereo
(http://gdstereo.com/recordings/gd023-jocelyn-robert-cycloides)
will be on familiar grounds.

Voir / See http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/jocelynrobert6

 

“…this is another wonderful release by Robert. I have been playing this the last few days every morning, which I think is the best time of the day for that kind of music. It’s meditative, yet also a bit alien and strange. It sounds melodic upon superficial listening, but perhaps it’s all much more abstract upon closer inspection. It sounds as composed as it sounds improvised; and vice versa. Excellent meditation!” http://www.vitalweekly.net/986.html

Within the art of Jocelyn Robert, manifested diffusely over the years through text, installations, visual images, sound art, music and performance the piano has lingered as a touchstone and resource. More specifically Robert has written music for Disklavier since the early 1990s. Piano Seul is a set of negotiations with software; improvisation in real time, enabled or obstructed by pre-delineated contours and programmed constraints. This recording was made live at Quebec’s Mois Multi festival in February 2014. Apart from brief flourishes of harmonic lushness and bursts of mechanistic rhythm the music is devoid of flamboyance, yet its puzzle-solving
air of alert concentration and steady determination is quietly compelling. No fireworks, but a pervasive sense of fending off potential confusion, of dodging false leads and avoiding tangles. A tightrope walk for a pianist alone at a keyboard with a mind of its own.          – The Wire, October 2015