Monique Jean

Troubles presents two extended works by Monique Jean, composed in her Montréal studio between 2009 and 2013 and mastered in 2018 by Christian Bouchard. Both deal with masses in motion: of people in the street in one case, of voices and interpretations across history in the other.

T.A.G. (2013), for trottoir, asphalte, goudron (sidewalk, asphalt, tar), is inspired by crowds of demonstrators and the energy of shapes that become flood, drift and multitude. Its sounds, mainly synthesized, are at once organic and urban, moving through sudden bifurcations, breakaways, accelerations and walls of resistance. It premiered at the Akousma X festival in Montréal and was a finalist for Premiere of the Year at the Prix Opus 2013-14.

Out of Joint is an essay in sound hybridization on Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the film adaptations, stagings and rewrites it has inspired. Jean is clear that it is neither musical theatre, opera nor audio documentary: it works through grafts of times, readings and references, overlaying the voices that have faced the play’s moral questions in different eras. Its motto comes from Peter Brook: “Shakespeare never stays on a single plane.” First heard in 2009 at a homage to Pierre Mercure, it was revised in 2011; it includes the sound of a ride at La Ronde recorded by Bouchard and ice on a frozen lake from Mario Gauthier.

Born in Caraquet, New Brunswick, in 1960, Monique Jean works in electroacoustic and mixed music, installation and improvisation, treating sound materials as organisms in constant evolution. Her album Greffes won the 2012-13 Prix Opus, and she has performed with the quartet Theresa Transistor.

CD in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 18152, 2018.