Shinjuku's Blues
for piano and live-electronics
(2003 - revision 2007)
A basic idea : the technology as an instrumental extension (very banal !). Just enough to offer a noisy and microtonal "super-instrument" that invades the space of sounds conceived as an hybrid world… Like our XXIst century's world : between different contemporary esthetics and other musical spheres that have changed my life (jazz, popular and underground stages, world music, gestures from Asia) ; and - why not ? - a touch of japanese sensuality or even something more powerful, like this kind of symbolic "naive" erotic as expressed in the paintings of Aoshima Chiho. An explosive puzzle… one of whose origin lies in the novels of Murakami Ryû (one of my favorite japanese writers).
Urban cruelty, but also generative power which inspired the multiple layers of virtuoso piano textures, each of them defining a specific behavior with a quasi "thematic gesture" provided for the memory of the listener ; gestures also related with some sound manipulations with a kind of violence which occurs in the electronic treatments.
Shinjuku's Blues was commissioned by the "Centre Pousseur" (previously "Centre de Recherches et de Formation Musicales de Wallonie" - Electronic music Studios of Liege - Belgium). Special thanks to Jean-Marc Sullon, musical assistant and electronic manager of this institution, for his precious advises and help for the elaboration of the Max patch for the piece.
This work was premiered at the occasion of the Festival Ars Musica - Brussels - by the pianist of the ensemble Proxima Centauri (Bordeaux, France)
Claude LEDOUX