Quelques fictions (Download) Track listing detail
Trompe de Cataimaans
Gabriel Dharmoo
- Year of composition: 2019
- Duration: 2:02
Stereo
ISRC CAA4J2010020
- 96 kHz, 24 bits
Solo improvisation, for mouth and hands
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Notre meute
Gabriel Dharmoo / Gabriel Dharmoo
- Year of composition: 2012-13, 18
- Duration: 12:40
- Instrumentation: 5 a capella voices
- Commission: SMCQ, with support from the CCA
Stereo
ISRC CAA4J2010021
- 96 kHz, 24 bits
Notre meute (Our Pack) is an ethnographic fiction evoking the music and manners of an invented population, whose origins are geographically and temporally unknown. Apparently singing, other times talking, sometimes wailing, other times stammering, “our pack” will (un) fairly be perceived in the ambiguous spectrum that ranges from the “primitive” to the “civilized,” from the “savage” to the “sophisticated.”
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Premiere
- February 25, 2013, Montréal / Nouvelles Musiques 2013: Love Songs, Cathédrale Christ Church, Montréal (Québec)
Duo de Porketche
Gabriel Dharmoo, Elizabeth Lima
- Year of composition: 2019
- Duration: 2:59
Stereo
ISRC CAA4J2010022
- 96 kHz, 24 bits
Duo improvisation with Elizabeth Lima. Porrkeettchheeeeee!!!
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Futile Spells
Gabriel Dharmoo / Gabriel Dharmoo
- Year of composition: 2016, 19
- Duration: 14:02
- Instrumentation: chorus
- Commission: Soundstreams
Stereo
ISRC CAA4J2010023
- 96 kHz, 24 bits
In recent works, I imagine strange millennium-old vocal styles/techniques from fictional cultures. This piece focuses on magical, supernatural or ritualistic spells that might have belonged to ancient populations. But if these civilizations could not save themselves from extinction, can one place trust in their belief systems? Should one dismiss these spells as merely futile, or does cynicism prevent one from recognizing the magical?
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Awards
Duo de Moogeon
Gabriel Dharmoo
- Year of composition: 2019
- Duration: 1:31
Stereo
ISRC CAA4J2010024
- 96 kHz, 24 bits
Two solo improvisations, superimposed.
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Averse et enfants Lpiènr
Gabriel Dharmoo
- Year of composition: 2019
- Duration: 2:28
Stereo
ISRC CAA4J2010025
- 96 kHz, 24 bits
Comprovisation created after vocal exploration workshops with 8-14 year-old campers at Camp musical Père Lindsay.
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Vaai Irandu
Gabriel Dharmoo / Gabriel Dharmoo
- Year of composition: 2009, 19
- Duration: 8:33
- Instrumentation: choir and 2 voices
- Commission: Ensemble contemporain de Montréal
Stereo
ISRC CAA4J2010026
- 96 kHz, 24 bits
This vocal piece explores the timbral and polyphonic potential of the human voice, as evoked in the Tamil title Vaai Irandu, which means Two Mouths.
The first mouth’s material is inspired ragas of South Indian Carnatic music, namely Kalyani, Thodi, Shankarabharanam, Abhogi and Saveri. Melodic fragments and gamakas (ornaments) from these ragas are developed in sequence to construct what we could call an imaginary metaraga.
The second mouth consists in percussive phonemes, superimposed to the melodic line of the first. These clicks and ejective consonants gradually reveal an arithmetical rhythmical construction typical of Carnatic percussion figures.
Composed after the composer’s first trip to Chennai, dedicated to learning Carnatic music. Overtly inspired by melodic and rhythmical fragments from this South Indian classical music, this “fiction” is the closest one to reality. Dharmoo had already adapted the piece from the angle of fake culture by integrating it as the opening of his solo show Anthropologies imaginaires — labeled as a Ruonshtan invocation prayer in that context. Meeting Priya Shah in 2017, a singer interested in Hindustani, Carnatic, jazz and improvised music amongst others, sparked the idea of singing Vaai Irandu as a duet for vocalists with timbres closer to the source of inspiration.
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Second Prize in the Godfrey-Ridout Award of the SOCAN Foundation Awards for Young Composers (Canada, 2008)