Interface[s] Montréal

Digital Sound

Louis Dufort

Composer

View the presentation [In French]

Throughout his musical journey, including stops at Université de Montréal (Bachelor’s Degree, 1997) and Conservatoire de musique de Montréal (First Prize – Magna Cum Laude/ with Great Distinction, 1999), Louis Dufort has continued to develop a personal style that is fundamentally expressionist, bordering occasionally on the dramatic, and often aimed at catharsis. This holds true for several of his electroacoustic compositions, including: Pointe-aux- Trembles (1996), Transit (1998) and Zénith (1999); as well as mixed-media pieces such as Lucie (1998) and Consomption (1999), in which the artist becomes an actual character in the narrative discourse. It is however with Décap – for solo tape (2000), which delved into the horror of the war in Kosovo, that the dramatist reached his artistic peak. Décap, which received mention at the Ars Electronica awards, put the final exclamation point on the exacerbated representational drama that opened the door to the enhanced abstract expressiveness found in compositions with real-time treatments such as: Spiel (2001, flute) Accident (2001, soprano saxophone), Intonarumori (2002, harbour symphony), Déflagration (2002, for 11 instrumentalists) and Manu Militari (2003, saxophone quartet). Currently, the successful young composer has increasingly tuned his attentions towards multimedia creation; developing a video/music interface presented at ZKM in Germany and designed to simultaneously process sound and images in real-time. And, more recently, he completed work on an Opera entitled L’Archange (The Archangel), a “Chants_Libres” production. (See list of compositions for a comprehensive overview).

His works have played in venues in Montréal and across Europe, as well as during several electroacoustic events such as “Rien à Voir” (2000) and “
Élektra” (2000-2001 and 2003). Mr. Dufour was also a contributing composer for “Symphonie du Millénaire” (Millennium Symphony) (2000). Since 2000, he has been collaborating on a regular basis with local contemporary dance choreographers, most notably Marie Chouinard and Jocelyne Montpetit, in the creation of musical compositions for performance, including several pieces that received worldwide recognition (i.e. Le cri du Monde).

The composer previously released a collection of his works on a disk entitled Connexion, which appeared on the “Empreintes Digitales” label in 2001 and which was nominated for ADISQ and Opus awards. Other works, Vulvatron 2000 and Concept 2018957, received first prizes at “Électro – Vidéo Clip” (ACREQ, 1996) and SOCAN (1997) respectively.

In addition to his work as a composer, Mr. Dufour also sits on the artistic committees for ACREQ and SMCQ, and devotes a portion of his time to teaching, most notably at Conservatoire de musique de Montréal (computer assisted musical techniques and complementary composition).

List of works by Louis Dufort (French PDF File, 80 KB)