Browse by Artist: FERRARI, LUC

Artist:	FERRARI, LUC
Title:	Labyrinthe De Violence/Dance
Label:	ALGA MARGHEN (ITALY)
Format:	LP
Price:	$31.00
Catalog #:	MARGHEN 027LP

One-sided release. "'Dance' was part of a sound/visual installation called 'Labyrinthe De Violence.' Previously unpublished, this radical experimental work has now been released on LP record in collaboration with the New Media Dept of Centre Pompidou (National Museum of Modern Art) in Paris for 'Oeuvres sonores 2,' a 2-day-event organized by Emanuele Carcano at Beaubourg on April 5th & 6th, 2009. 'Labyrinthe De Violence' was an installation for tape sounds and 2 slide projectors conceived in 1975 by Luc Ferrari. The installation was a visual and sound metaphor of violence within contemporary civilized society. Four different rooms with a central space created the spatial context of this work. The specific environmental sonority (1. 'Violence;' 2. 'Pollution;' 3. 'Profit;' 4. 'Mechanism' / 'Paysage' / 'Danse') created for each of the four rooms naturally superposed themselves in the central space. 'Dance' was one of those sonorities, minimally constructed using 2 different sounds: a very low electronic drone deeply resonating for the whole duration with, in the end, the accumulation of deconstructed sequences played by Luc Ferrari on an electric organ. Documenting one of Luc Ferrari's most beautiful and mysterious sonic works, this LP edition will be the first in a series of Alga Marghen projects presenting a still undiscovered side of the poetical universe of this fundamental composer. This 1-sided LP, issued in an edition limited to 500 copies only."

Artist:	FERRARI, LUC
Title:	Interrupteur/Tautologos 3
Label:	BLUE CHOPSTICKS
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	BLUE 001CD

1999 release, repressed; the debut release on Dave Grubbs's reissue-oriented label (moving forward from where Dexter's Cigar left off). "Ferrari -- along with Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry, François Bayle, and others -- is one of the pioneers of the particular style of tape music known as 'musique concrète'. More significantly, he must be counted as one of the most complexly, most idiosyncratically compelling of post-War composers. Ferrari has time and again ranged far afield of musique concrète, and Interrupteur/Tautologos 3 is one such foray into instrumental music. But what a setting-forth! Mon dieu! These particular realizations came about through Ferrari's directed improvisations of Konstantin Simonovitch's ensemble, and the recordings were originally released in 1970 by EMI in their 'Perspectives Musicales' series. 'Interrupteur' is largely static music, a music of long tones periodically interrupted by aleatoric events. If it references musical minimalism (particularly Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Robert Ashley), this surely counts as an intuitive, very personal result. 'Tautologos 3' pursues the idea of the superposition of cycles of different lengths that, once set into motion, will continually result in new events. Conventionally understood, a tautology is a redundancy in which the same meaning is expressed in different works; the same things are 'said' repeatedly in 'Taulologos 3', but as the context shifts through the displacement of the various cycles, how could there be no gain, no furtherance of both logic and sensation? In a world: exhilarating.""Interrupteur" is from 1967 and features the following instrumentation: English horn, clarinet, bass clarinet, French horn, trumpet, violin, viola, cello, two percussions, two electric organs. It is one of the most outright powerful and devastating recordings within the avant garde realm. "Tautologos 3" is form 1970 and features: flute, oboe, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, viola, cello, double bass, electric guitar, electric organ & vibraphone.

Artist:	FERRARI, LUC
Title:	Cycle Des Souvenirs (1995-2000)
Label:	BLUE CHOPSTICKS
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	BLUE 008CD

First ever release of a large scale electroacoustic piece five years in the making that revisits numerous periods from Ferrari's five decades of work. From the composer's liner notes: "I have been composing a new series of works under the general title Exploitation des Concepts. The point is to take concepts I have been experimenting with throughout my entire life as a composer, and to put them to use in every possible direction: in instrumental as well as electroacoustic music, in video, in multimedia installation, in new technologies as well as old ones.... These Exploitations go in all directions: the Tautology, superimposed cycles, the minimalism of the Presque Rien series, architectures of chance, anecdote, narrative, everyday sounds, arte povera . . . souvenirs . . . etc. -- all these concepts that have always preoccupied me but which until now I hadn't really exploited. So we find images of my childhood, my street, my subway; places I passed through and which struck me enough to record them, certain villages in Italy or the sea in Portugal; of my present, too: workplaces, my souvenirs, my house. The Cycle des Souvenirs also means that all the elements are structured in cycles which, when superimposed, produce chance encounters." -- Luc Ferrari.

Artist:	FERRARI, LUC
Title:	Far-West News (Episodes 2 and 3)
Label:	BLUE CHOPSTICKS
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	BLUE 016CD

"Far-West News is the late Luc Ferrari's three-part aural travelogue of time that he and his wife Brunhild Meyer spent in the American Southwest in 1998. Far-West News strains familiar categories of genre; as Ferrari himself writes, 'It's not a report or a soundscape, not a Hörspiel or an electronic work, not a portrait or a recorded reality exhibit, not a transgression of reality or an Impressionist account, not a so on or so forth. It's a composition....[C]omposition in some cases, especially in mine, and increasingly in my life, is a perverted game with the truth.' There you go. File under 'perverted game.' Far-West News is constructed from field recordings, narration, and overlaid electronic music fragments. The electronic interruptions read as representations of musical accompaniment that likely existed in Luc Ferrari's brain to keep things interesting -- herky-jerky musical phrases are slathered ex post facto atop the sounds of a foundry, a Garth Brooks-ish singer-songwriter, a walk in Death Valley. These David Lynchian sonic interruptions of the everyday have a found object quality that's central to Far-West News. There's a steady macro-rhythm of cars passing along the highway, recalling the basso continuo of the train in Glenn Gould's The Idea of North. In his dual role as composer and tape editor, Luc Ferrari had a supreme knack for musicalizing the comedy of linguistic confusion. Luc and Brunhild, Far-West News's main characters, treat locals and yokels alike -- with exquisite visitor-hospitality. Lewis and Clark, meet Bouvard and Pécuchet. This could be a case study in cross-cultural sociality. Far-West News takes place during the lead-up to the Clinton impeachment -- innocent time -- and Lewinsky looms over the landscape. It's all punctuated by Luc's laugh. Far-West News, like Ferrari's classic Presque Rien No. 1, is a work of landscape. Where Presque Rien No. 1 presented a landscape wiped of speech, Far-West News revels in the locals' voices and their choice of words."

Artist:	FERRARI, LUC
Title:	Acousmatrix - History of Electronic Music III
Label:	BVHAAST (NETHERLANDS)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	BVHAAST 9009

Third volume in the Acousmatrix series. "A lovely work of electro-acoustic music by one of the French pioneers of musique concrete, Petite Symphonie Intuitive Pour un Paysage de Printemps ('Little Intuitive Symphony for a Spring Landscape') recreates the composer's experiences during a climb toward sunset on the Causse Mejean, a high plateau in the Massif Central, including his recollection of a shepherd's flute and its reverberations across the landscape. The flute sounds and multiple echoes continue in changing musical modes throughout the piece (the tonic redefined by electronic drones), blending together with sounds of the countryside and conversational fragments from the human presence to create a beautiful sonic landscape of 25 minutes duration. 'Heterozygote' is a musique concrete composition realized on tape; it combines fragments of conversations and other sounds and noises from nature and daily life in an organized and poetic manner (although not plot-oriented). Bits of human speech in several languages are used both for their charm of meaning and their musical qualities of inflection and pitch. At one moment several people express how much they enjoyed having visited some unnamed place. At another moment a mysterious transformed voice chants 'dans un reve' (in a dream), but the accompanying sounds are more like the real creaks and crashes of a house in a windy storm, with intermittent disturbed cries from the sleeper. For the first time in a musique concrete work, the sounds are modulated and transformed but retain their natural character; the result is not abstract, but rather moves about the world with the ease of a thought or a dream. In the 'Presque Rien' (Almost Nothing) series of musique concrete pieces, Ferrari further developed this technique and sensibility with sounds and their interconnections that are almost unidentifiable, while nevertheless retaining a feeling of naturalness." --Blue Gene Tyranny, AMG

Artist:	FERRARI, LUC
Title:	Tautologos and Other Early Electronic Works
Label:	ELECTRONIC MUSIC FOUNDATION
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	EMF 037CD

"Luc Ferrari is among the best-known of the early electronic music pioneers. He was director of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales from 1959 to 1960, working closely with Pierre Schaeffer, and his music played a decisive role in defining the range of musique concrete. But he went further to become one of the most radical composers of his time, and this CD, with its incisive character and exceptional sounds, marks the starting point for his artistic evolution. The compositions include 'Etudes aux accidents I Study on accidents' (1958), 'Etudes aux sons tendus / Study on stretched sounds'(1958), 'Visages V / Appearance V (1959), 'Tate et queue du dragon I Head and tail of the dragon' (1960), 'Tautokgos 1(1961), 'Tautologos 2' (1961), 'Und so weiter! And so much further' (1966, with Gerard Fremy, pianist)."

Artist:	FERRARI, LUC
Title:	Presque Rien Avec Luc Ferrari
Label:	ELICA (ITALY)
Format:	DVD
Price:	$19.00
Catalog #:	ELICA 4290DVD

"The first DVD release on Elica is a beautiful 50-minute portrait of composer Luc Ferrari made by his friend Jacqueline Caux with Olivier Pascal, which is fully informative and acutely representative of Ferrari's spirit. Featuring Elise Caron, as Luc Ferrari and herself, and Luc Ferrari, as himself only, going through archive documentation, intriguing dialogues, invented autobiographies, music performances, evocative installations, sidewalk accidents, encounters with sound-sculptor Christof Schläger and electro musician eRikm, etc. Documenting the work of one of the most groundbreaking and seductive composers of the 20th century, this film also shows Luc Ferrari's 'extremely libertarian personality: his spontaneity, his inclination towards hedonism and sensuality, his curious and open character, his rejection of all kind of power and of all stable position within institutions, his pronounced taste for games, his sense of self-derision and his ferocious refusal of all dogmatism.' Jacqueline Caux is a writer, film-maker and organizer of live events, who is the author of the essential interview book with Luc Ferrari (same title as the film) as well as books on Anne Halprin and Louise Bourgeois, and is the author of several experimental films and remarkable documentaries, which include the highly-acclaimed Detroit: The Cycle of The Mental Machine on Detroit techno and a brand new film on the performance of Ferrari's 'Symphonie Dechirée.' Olivier Pascal has collaborated, among others, with film-director Claude Duty. Original French version with English subtitles; NTSC region-free DVD in large format digipak cover with notes in French and English by Jacqueline Caux."

Artist:	FERRARI, LUC
Title:	L'Oeuvre Électronique
Label:	INA GRM (FRANCE)
Format:	10CD BOX
Price:	$100.00
Catalog #:	INA 6017/26

"The decision to make a boxed set called Luc Ferrari, electronic works, and defining the word electronic in the widest sense possible, was to bring together an essential part of this composer's work: tape music without any classical instruments. From L'étude aux accidents (1958) to Arythmiques (2003), the 31 works in this compilation will help the listener to discover all the facets of his art based on captured sounds. He tried and tested all the different techniques of studio work: brilliantly elaborated electroacoustic works, radio-phonic story-telling or Hörspiele, which he particularly appreciated or other semi-improvised works. This editorial choice is not a question of drawing lines between electroacoustic music with live instruments which he mastered perfectly, and this one here that is only composed of fixed and manipulated sounds. What we wanted was to show the strong links between natural sounds and their score on this subject, Pierre Schaeffer always insisted on the necessary balance between sound material and music. Just the strength of recorded sounds (voices, landscapes, strange sounds, everyday scenes, etc.) without formal mastery is not enough to maintain an attentive ear. In this way, each work of Ferrari's is a discrete lesson in music. Ferrari was always very lucid when he claimed that a composer was a little like a 'journalist' who, through his composition, witnessed the state the world was in while at the same time creating a work of art. This is another aspect of this edition: as we listen and in filigree, half a century unfolds before us. Technological progress, political awareness, reports and essential encounters are witness to a committed artist." -- Daniel Teruggi / David Jisse
       10CD box with 100-page book. Tracklist: CD1: 'Étude aux accidents,' 'Étude aux sons tendus,' 'Étude floue,' 'Échantillon pour mimes,' 'Visage 5,' 'Tête et queue du dragon,' 'Tautologos 1,' 'Tautologos 2,' 'Music Promenade.'
       CD2: 'Hétérozygote,' 'J'ai été coupé,' 'Petite symphonie intuitive pour un paysage de printemps.'
       CD3: 'Presque rien n°1 ou Le lever du jour au bord de la mer,' 'Presque rien n°2 ou Ainsi continue la nuit dans ma tête multiple,' 'Presque rien avec filles,' 'Presque rien n°4 : la remontée du village.'
       CD4: 'Danses organiques.'
       CD5: 'Ouvert-Fermé,' 'Unheimlich Schön,' 'Dérivatif.'
       CD6: 'Dialogue ordinaire avec la machine ou trois fables pour bande doucement philosophiques,' 'Strathoven,' 'Capricorne,' 'Chute libre.'
       CD7: 'Far-West News 1 : De Santa Fé à Monument Valley,' 'Far-West News 2: De Page à Grand Canyon.'
       CD8: 'Far-West News 3: De Prescott à Los Angeles,' 'Archives génétiquement modifiées.'
       CD9: 'Les Anecdotiques, Exploitation des Concepts N° 6,' 'Numéro quatro, Ronda Espagne, juin 2001. Un groupe de touristes espagnols dans un musee,' 'Plaza de toros, Ronda. L'arène est en reparation,' 'Essayage, Saint Jean d'Angélys, France. Juillet 2001 Pendant une répétition, les comédiens essaient leur costume,' 'Le ciel de Toscane Italie. Août 2001,' 'Superstrada n°2. Toscane,' 'Un cyprès au coucher du soleil. Toscane,' 'Mer d'Eze. France. Septembre 2001,' 'Les Vendanges. Saint-Laurent d'Eze, France,' 'Le Ranch. Texas USA, Octobre 2001,' 'Chicago USA. Octobre 2001. Répétition pour un concert,' 'Harley Davidson. Texas. Promenade du dimanche dans un village,' 'Les chaussures rouges. L'Estaque, France. Juillet 2002. Visite à la cimenterie Lafarge,' 'Trou de mer, L'Estaque. Juillet 2002,' 'La Joliette. Port de Marseille. France. Embarquement des containers,' 'Les portes du Rove. L'Estaque, même période. Le Rove est un tunnel maritime qui donne dans une calanque à l'Est de l'Estaque.'
       CD10: 'L'escalier des aveugles (1991),' 'L'escalier des aveugles,' 'Intermède,' 'Suzanne et le clochard,' 'Interlude,' 'El cuerpo ingles,' 'Intérieur,' 'Hommage à Lorca,' 'Izaskun et la pomme,' 'Interférence,' 'Sans savoir pourquoi,' 'Nada,' 'Madrid kilomètre zero,' 'La nouvelle de l'escalier,' 'Les Arythmiques (2003).'

Artist:	FERRARI, LUC
Title:	Volume 1: Chansons Pour Le Corps
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 081CD

2007 remastered reissue version; originally released in 1999. Includes "Chansons Pour Le Corps" (1988-94; for voice, clarinets, percussion, piano and synthesizer; Elise Caron, voice), and "Et Si Tout Entière Maintenant" (1986-87; symphonic tale for voice, orchestral sound and tape; with texts by Collette Fellous; Anne See, voice; Nouvel Orchestre Philharmonique; Yves Prin, conductor). "The works on this disc show a combination of Ferrari's musique concrete and instrumental styles. The point of departure for 'Chansons Pour Le Corps' was a series of spontaneous interviews with women on the subject of female form which Ferrari recorded in the Jardin du Luxembourg. It's a great image, a young woman out for a Sunday afternoon stroll approached by a man wondering if she might allow him to record her talking about various intimate parts of her body. The interviewees were invited to speak about their eyes, hands, breasts and sex, and those who accepted did so with extraordinary candor. Novelist and radio presenter Colette Fellous was then asked to write texts based on the tapes to be set for soprano and ensemble interspersed with extracts from the original interviews. 'Et Si Tout Entière Maintenant' a 'symphonic tale' for voice, orchestral sound and tape is an extraordinary work. The orchestral score was performed, recorded and then treated electronically in his studio, though the orchestra is never deformed beyond all recognition. This is incorporated into the piece along with the authentic sounds of the Swedish icebreaker and its crew, and Fellous' spoken text. What results is typical Ferrari genre blending, inhabiting a region somewhere between fact and fiction, documentary and poetry, orchestral and electronic music."

Artist:	FERRARI, LUC
Title:	Archives Génétiquement Modifiées/Société II
Label:	ROBOT
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	ROBOT 039CD

"Robot Records is honored and pleased to present two historic compositions for the first time on CD by the late, great Luc Ferrari. The programme opens with 'Archives Génétiquement Modifiées' (Genetically Modified Archives), a work for 'memorized sounds' from 2000. This composition (subtitled: 'Exploitation des Concepts No. 3') was the third in a series of later pieces in which Mr. Ferrari revisited aspects of his early concepts and compositional strategies to create wholly new works. The result here is a very bizarre, sensual, and beautifully-paced electroacoustic work of aural memories and (re)collections created by Mr. Ferrari utilizing sounds from his vast archive of musical activities. After a short intermission, the program continues with a true highlight of Mr. Ferrari's early instrumental work entitled 'Société II' from 1967. Subtitled: 'Et Si Le Piano Était Un Corps De Femme'/'And If The Piano Were The Body Of A Woman' (for 4 soloists and 16 instruments), this composition appeared opposite 'Presque Rien' on the legendary Deutsche Grammophon LP. 'Société II' may be viewed as an erotically-charged piece of musical theater where the soloists 'compete' for the attention of a woman (the piano). This concerto, with its gestures and a fantastic kaleidoscope of styles and color, shows the extravagant qualities of the piano in its 'harmony, imagination, and brutality.' Packaged in a full-color digipak with a 20-page bilingual (French/English) booklet featuring Mr. Ferrari's early artwork, notations, and program notes, along with an extensive commentary by Jim O'Rourke and Jay Sanders. Remastered sound with audio restoration by fellow INA GRM alumnus, Jean Schwarz. A wonderful glimpse into the world of one of the most legendary, unique, and inspiring musical figures of the 20th century."

Artist:	FERRARI, LUC
Title:	Les Anecdotiques
Label:	SUB ROSA (BELGIUM)
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	SR 207CD

"Even if his art is historically linked to the musique concrète school, Luc Ferrari (born in Paris in 1929) is above all a man with a freedom of spirit rarely equalled in the history of music, who has repeatedly left what he excelled at for new territory still unexplored; thus he is par excellence the composer of new fields of investigation. Ferrari joined the Groupe de Musique Concrète in 1958 and remained a member until 1966; he collaborated with Pierre Schaeffer in setting up the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (1958). By 1963-4 he had begun Hétérozygote, an extended tape piece in which ambient sounds unfold in narrative form, suggesting a dazzling variety of incidents, all unexplained. He was Professor of Composition at Cologne's Rheinische Musikschule from 1964 to 65. In 1965 and 1966 he produced Les Grandes Répétitions, a series of television documentaries with Gérard Patris on the subject of contemporary music, specifically Olivier Messiaen, Edgard Varèse, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Hermann Scherchen and Cecil Taylor. Luc Ferrari's diverse work and aesthetics continue to have a singular impact on the young generations of electronic musicians and artists. The corpus of his work is immense and includes hundreds of compositions of all kinds. Les Anecdotiques -- his last composition -- is a vast sound-film of more than an hour who explores in 15 steps the intensity of re-composed sounds from his continual travel around the world -- with electronic additional structures."

Artist:	FERRARI, LUC
Title:	Son Mémorisé
Label:	SUB ROSA (BELGIUM)
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	SR 252CD

This is the second of three Sub Rosa releases of instrumental works by this important artist. Luc Ferrari is considered one of the most legendary musical figures of the twentieth century, whose work and aesthetic continues to influence several generations of contemporary composers. Director of the Groupe de Recherche Musicales which he established with Pierre Schaeffer in Paris from 1958-1966, he is also one of the masters of musique concrète who influenced and expanded the genre with electro-acoustic instrumentation. Right from the start, the idea had been to release three very different CDs: one hörspiel, one of concrete music (new and older pieces) and one CD of instrumental works. Les Anecdotiques was the first step: a vast sound-film of more than an hour that explores in 15 steps the intensity of re-composed sounds from his continual travel around the world, with electronic additional structures. This album is the second step -- one that offers a retrospective -- the previously unreleased "Promenade Symphonique dans un Paysage Musical" from 1976-78, the final "Presque Rien #4" and a fresh reflection dating from the last months of 2002, "Saliceburry Cocktail," a large-scale composition exploring the idea of hideout, scrambled listening -- a tortuous entanglement of concrète and electronic. The forthcoming third and final release will be three recent instrumental compositions for electronics, piano and viola which were recorded under Luc's supervision -- the last works he ever recorded, as he passed away in August 2005.

Artist:	FERRARI, LUC
Title:	Didascalies
Label:	SUB ROSA (BELGIUM)
Format:	CD/DVD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	SR 261CD

This is a new version of Didascalies, previously released as SR 259CD. This version has the same music as SR 259CD, but with new cover artwork, plus a bonus DVD disc (European PAL-format only, sorry). Didascalies is the last release in Sub Rosa's three-part series of instrumental works by this important artist, now packaged with a DVD featuring Luc Ferrari at work on this -- his last experiment. Luc Ferrari is considered one of the most legendary musical figures of the twentieth century, whose work and aesthetic continues to influence several generations of contemporary composers. Director of the Groupe de Recherche Musicales which he established with Pierre Schaeffer in Paris from 1958-1966, he is also one of the masters of musique concrète who influenced and expanded the genre with electro-acoustic instrumentation. Right from the start, the idea had been to release three very different CDs: one hörspiel, one of concrete music (new and older pieces) and one CD of instrumental works. Les Anecdotiques was the first step: a vast sound-film of more than an hour that explores in 15 steps the intensity of re-composed sounds from his continual travels around the world, with additional electronic structures. Son Mémorisé was a retrospective of concrète and electronic compositions. Didascalies brings together "Rencontres Fortuites," "Didascalies" and "Tautologos III" -- two recent works for piano, viola and electronics, and one open-ended work -- which featured at a concert at the Boendael Chapel in Brussels. A few months later, this release was assembled with Ferrari's supervision at the legendary Brème studios with final development at La Muse en Circuit. This release also documents the composition of a new version of "Tautologos," Ferrari's last recorded piece, with woven piano and viola breaking down, starting anew in an opposite direction with bandoneon, DX7 and books being closed every two and a half minutes. About a month later, Luc Ferrari passed away. Performed by Jean-Philippe Collard-Neven (piano) and Vincent Royer (viola).

Artist:	FERRARI, LUC
Title:	Cellule 75
Label:	TZADIK
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TZ 7033

"Irreverent, psychosexual and always fascinating, Ferrari's work manifests itself in texts, instrumental textures, electroacoustic compositions, reportings, films, theatre, etc. It is an honor for Tzadik to release two of his most important works from the 1970s, recorded under the supervision of the composer himself. 'Place des Abbesses,' the first electro acoustic portrait work realized at his home studio in Paris, 1977, is an evocative portrait of a small square between The Sacred Heart of God and Saints and the Pigalle of licentiousness and sex, two familiar Ferrari obsessions. 'Cellule 75' is an explosive, dynamic work for piano, percussion and tape, balancing improvisational spontaneity with the more exacting writing of classical forms."

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