Pierre-Yves Macé

Six long years have passed since Pierre-Yves Macé's last album on John Zorn's prestigious Composer Series. In the meantime, the talented composer has been working hard and has gained eminence in the world of contemporary music. He has produced works for Ensemble Intercontemporain (founded by Pierre Boulez), the Paris Chamber Orchestra, and the Hong Kong Sinfonietta and has collaborated with directors Joris Lacoste and Sylvain Creuzevault on ambitious works mixing theatre and opera.

Much to our surprise, he returned to his first love—the studio—a few weeks before the birth of his son, which resulted in a series of highly contrasted yet straightforward tracks. Here, Macé deploys an abundance of forms and sounds: a detuned piano triptych, a Bertolt Brecht sound archive, abrasive electronics, some melancholic ambient escapades, an elegant cello solo, a miniature for bass and celesta flute, or funeral melodies for trélombarde, a peculiar instrument from Brittany.

With this very personal record, Pierre-Yves Macé pushes further his exploration of "disturbing strangeness".