Violeta García / Émilie Girard-Charest – Impermanence

1. I (5:57)
2. II (13:23)
3. III (7:43)
4. IV (7:30)
5. V (7:17)

· Violeta García: cello
· Émilie Girard-Charest: cello

All music by Violeta García & Émilie Girard-Charest (SOCAN)
Recorded by Carlos Quebrada at Ideo Music Studio in Buenos Aires, Argentina in October 2019
Mixed and mastered by Carlos Quebrada
Cover linocut artworks by Nina Normand
Photos by Celes Rojas Mugica (García) & Dom Garcia (Girard-Charest)
Graphic design by László Szakács
Produced by Éric Normand & László Juhász

Released: June 2021 / first edition of 300 cds, in co-production with Tour de Bras
Direct purchase: Bandcamp / Discogs

GALLERY ↓

REVIEWS ↓

“When choosing a title for an audio document of improvised music, you really can’t go wrong with Impermanence; it’s not exactly original, in terms of either the specific genre or music as a whole, but it will never not be accurate. In the case of Violeta García (a cofounder of the splendid TVL Rec imprint) and Émilie Girard-Charest’s first meeting as a duo, the word accumulates a more unique meaning because of the two musicians’ chosen instruments. Cellos are often associated with their ability to emit sustained, ‘eternal’ tones, and are utilized as such in anything from acoustic drone music old and new to traditional classical and chamber accompaniments. But in García’s and Girard-Charest’s hands they frequently become anything but eternal, instead acting as boundless surfaces for all sorts of extended technique scrabble, auxiliary object play, short stilted bowings, and barely-there below-the-bridge vapors. Despite the differences between the two artists’ careers (García operates almost entirely within improvisational contexts, while Girard-Charest primarily performs solo and ensemble compositions) their musical interplay is superb; some of the best moments of their interactions surface when both take a step back from volume and intensity and deal in quiet timbral harmonies of scrape and rustle, but the louder stretches are excellent too, especially the high-octane tense trills and punchy pizzicato plunks of segment III, which in turn dissolve into and rematerialize from their own forms of sonic reticence. And the near-apocalyptic resin-shredding of V is simply breathtaking. To think that my first reaction when I found this release was, Two cellos? Yeah, right.” / Jack Davidson, Noise Not Music, 6 July 2021

“Deux violoncellistes provenant du Canada et impliquées dans la mouvance du label collectif Tour de Bras, lequel entame une édition conjointe avec le label slovène Inexhaustible Editions dont je vous entretiens au fil de ses (très) intéressantes parutions. Cinq improvisations illustrant soniquement les ressources sonores et vibratoires de deux violoncelles en symbiose. I – II – III – IV – V pour 5:57 – 13:23 – 7:43 – 7:30 – 7:17). Très remarquable duo qu’on peut faire tourner à l’envi sur le lecteur CD en diffusant les échappées et mises en commun auditives et ludiques créant des formes musicales aussi pertinentes et fascinantes les unes que les autres. Ça zig-zague, s’imbrique, chante à l’unisson, sature la vibration, s’entre choque, frappe col legno, rebondit, sursaute, dérappe, mordille, grince… L’empathie entre les deux musiciennes se situe au zénith. J’avais déjà profité joyeusement d’un super Quatuor d’Occasion où Émilie Girard-Charest excellait aux côtés de Malcolm Golstein, Joshua Zubot et Jean René (violons, alto et cello). Vous avez bien lu : Malcolm Goldstein ! Joshua Zubot est le violoniste de choix de Tristan Honsinger au sein d’In The Sea… hum ! Donc, si vous avez quelques considérations pour les recherches violonistiques de l’éminent Dr Johannes Rosenberg, Impermanence sera pour vous un album de première bourre, un talisman précieux et le moyen de passer des instants délicieux et roboratifs question spleen morose engendré par cette pandémie qui n’en finit pas. La création libre contemporaine par excellence. Félicitations encore à László Juhász pour initier cette collaboration musicale outre-atlantique entre le Québec et la Slovénie. On pourra lui commander des albums d’Amérique du Nord en restant au sein de l’U.E. et éviter frais de douane et TVA abusifs.” / Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg, Orynx-improv’andsounds, 9 September 2021

“Duas jovens vozes da free music contemporânea se uniram aqui em projeto de muita potência expressiva. Este desconcertante duo de violoncelos traz a argentina Violeta Garcia ao lado da canadense Émille Girard-Charest. O registro foi realizado em outubro de 2019, no Ideo Music Studio, em Buenos Aires, e traz cinco peças, improvisação livre de elevada criatividade. Explorando técnicas estendidas e trazendo elementos das diferentes experiências de cada uma – que vai da música de câmara (Girard-Charest ) ao rock (Garcia) –, a dupla de violoncelistas cria uma obra de sensível vitalidade, cortante, densa, em diálogos quase agressivos nos quais as vozes podem tanto se unirem quanto duelarem, em resultados que, ouvidos por meio de caixas potentes, vão por vezes reverberar no peito – uma experiência de grande intensidade. Sai em CD, edição limitada de 300 cópias.”/ Fabricio Vieira, FreeForm, FreeJazz, 28 October 2021

“An album of double cello studio recordings from Buenos Aires in 2019 by cellists Violeta García and Émilie Girard-Charest. Lots of quick-quick motion from the get-go, spanning the instruments’ range from warm and mellow to spiked and sibilant rapidity.

It’s apparent from the beginning that these two are listening very closely to one another, breathing together, as it were. This makes for some heart-stopping interplay; lightning call and response, held chordage, grind and thump and prickle. At times they smear sound on each other or set up minimal points of sonic agreement, bouncing back and forth in some unknown game. A mad avian battle develops out of popping, scratching and hiss. I especially love the tiny creaks and groans peppered throughout – a reminder that it’s wood and tension that we’re witness to.

Deft improvisors know when to leave space as well as when to plow ahead full-bore, and from the evidence offered here García and Girard-Charest are well-heeled members of that group. They pass sections of phrases back and forth like sisters finishing each other’s thoughts, and then quietly hold a harmonic-filled chord together; a ghost come to visit. Things can go from sweet to sour almost imperceptibly, and gaps open which allow new directions to blossom. Squeaky string-polishing leads to full-on scrubbing leads to spot-worrying. There are heated arguments as well as passionate agreement, and everything is beautifully recorded. You can almost feel the wood and wire and hair. Tactile indeed!”/ Jeph Jerman, The Squid’s Ear, 2 March 2022

“Impermanence is a recording of duo improvisations by two cellists, the Brazilian Violeta García, primarily active in improvised music, and Quebecoise Émilie Girard-Charest, who has been primarily active in contemporary composed music, but whose adeptness as an improviser has been abundantly clear in recent duet performances with saxophonist Yves Charuest.

The five improvisations are titled merely I to V, with no effort made to add a programmatic dimension through verbal association. Similarly, there’s no detailed account of secondary materials, no hints whether the final track is created by amplified cellos played with bows covered with iron filings in an echo chamber shared with turbines. Perhaps it’s just a miracle of technique, possibly aided by close recording. The music is, in short, astonishing, whether it’s a dance of skittering harmonics, a ping-pong match of guttural, low register glissandi, soaring anarchic runs, microsecond timbral shifts, wondrous rhythmic counterpoint, bow scrapings or sustained microtonal cries.

What is most beautiful about this recording may be the resonance of and its fidelity to, that title: Impermanence. The music is an insistent present, a presence, a mercurial shared consciousness. It lives in the instant of cognition, insisting on the listener’s attentiveness to that instant, rather than dragging along the past as part of an ongoing, imagined formal construct. A sudden burst of Messiaen-ic birds in the midst of III is just that, something for which to be grateful as one moves on.” / Stuart Broomer, TheWholeNote, 7 March 2022

RADIO PLAYS ↓

· Pattern Dissection at Cashmere Radio, Berlin, 28 August 2021
· The Wire: Adventures In Music And Sound at Resonance FM, London, 15 June 2023