The sound poet Paul Dutton will be performing at the festival Nouvelles pistes artistiques inclassables (NPAI) in Niort (France) on July 30 and 31, 2008. The first concert will be with Quintet à Bras (Paul Dutton, voice; Thomas Charmetant, Mongolian cello; Camille Perrin, doublebass; and poets Charles Pennequin and Arno Calleja). The next day Paul Dutton will present a solo performance.

On June 19, 2008 Paul Dutton will perform at McNally Robinson Booksellers during the eVOCative festival in Saskatoon (Saskatchewan). The day after, he will give an artist’s talk and performance on the theme “Speech as Music” at the University of Saskatchewan, Edwards School of Business, at 1 pm. The eVOCative festival is a component of The Oral, the Written and Other Verbal Media Conference.

The composer and singer Paul Dutton will be performing the feature role of Wolf in R Murray Schafer’s The Princess of the Stars — an outdoor music-theatre pageant, running from August 28 to September 3, 2007 at The Haliburton Forest and Wildlife Reserve, Ontario, taking place on a lake at dawn… {nbio:dutton_pa} co-wrote with R Murray Schafer the music for the role of Wolf. You can listen to some online audio clips of his disc Oralizations (on which the Wolf Chant appears) that explores de limits of the voice.

Parmi les improvisateurs, il y en a pour qui l’instrument est le corps: chanteurs, poètes sonores, bruiteurs, etc. Malheureusement, il est plutôt rare de les voir se réunir, travaillant souvent des projets solos difficiles ou s’intégrant à des ensembles instrumentaux. C’est donc une excellente idée qu’a eu Michel Levasseur de réunir sur scène (et sur disque) ces cinq virtuoses de la bouche et de l’appareil respiratoire. Five men singing est un véritable festin pour les oreilles, un moment rituel fantastique rempli d’émotion et de poésie. Force est de constater que le tout diffère de la somme des parties: la musique du groupe est plus accessible que celle des individus pris un à un. Elle donne l’impression d’une grande écoute mutuelle, de constructions très précises, et puissantes. Les possibilités quasi-illimitées de ces voix nous font songer à certaines musiques électroniques, tant la diversité des textures sonores est grande. Ici, la musique se développe autour de mantras, saccades ou chants de gorge, physique, prenante et inventive. Après tout, l’improvisation n’est-elle pas une musique de tradition orale?

Ce disque que l’on pourrait considérer comme une «bizarrerie» se révèle comme l’un des plus beaux et des plus touchants disques que Victo nous ait offert dans les dernières années. Ce qui n’est pas peu dire.

Fruits de Mhère “les champs de l’improvisation” (fields of improvisation) is a small rural festival. Temporarily moved to Brassy (France), this 9th edition will present many artists from July 31 to August 3, 2003. Amongst others, Canadian vocal poet Paul Dutton; the Jean Derome and Alfred Spirli duo (flutes, percussions, small objects); finally, the trio of Kaffe Matthews (violin, digital manipulations), Martin Tétreault (turntable) and Michel F Côté (percussions, electronics).

Mouth Pieces is a superb compilation of acoustic oral soundworks by Paul Dutton. Dutton’s meticulous renderings of these works are cleanly recorded and offer an engaging crosssection of his repertoire. Dutton’s live soundworks are frequendy presented either solo or in the company of other artists and groups including individuals such as Holland’s Jaap Blonk, or groups such as Toronto’s superlative free improv band CCMC, or, the legendary The Four Horsemen poetry perfonnance group (1970-88). Dutton works partly in the tradition of early Dadaists or more recently established pioneers such as Bob Cobbing, and partly in the traditions of Jazz, Blues or Doo Wop, but, he goes beyond all of these precedents to develop his own performative style. This CD, sub-titled Solo Soundsinging traverses the conventional borders of music and poetry to anive at a new auditory frontier. Dunon’s piece Hiding approximately 6 minutes long and printed in colour on the CD itself, is a true masterwork. If you get the opportunity be sure to see Dunon perform this or his other works live. In the meantime, this CD offers a true artistry through jazz changeups, phonetic and resonant phonemics, tongue-pops, mouth percussions, forced-air effects, overtone and pitch modulations, all the more remarkable when you realize that this is all done by human voice only, and without electronic processing of any kind! Paul Dutton soars to sublime heights in this extraordinary soundworks collection.