Biography

Born in Montreal in 1947, Walter Boudreau studied piano and saxophone. at the age of 18, he leads his own jazz quartet, with whom he recorded a first album. In 1968, with the poet Raoul Duguay, he founded the Infonie, a patchwork of about 33 members located between the happening, jazz, contemporary music and multimedia.

Attracted by writing, Walter Boudreau examines the analysis with Bruce Mather at McGill University and the analysis and composition with Gilles Tremblay and Serge Garant at the Montreal Conservatory of Music (1969 -73). He is at this time, particularly influenced by the music of Edgar Varese and by the discovery of serialism of Anton Webern. Recipient of several grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, he studied in Europe and the United States with Mauricio Kagel, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Gyorgy Ligeti, Olivier Messiaen, Iannis Xenakis and Pierre Boulez. on his return after many tours in conjunction with Jeunesses Musicales of Canada and the Festival Concert Society of Vancouver and private courses in computer science and music at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver and at the Center for Music Experiment of San Diego (California) and with the Computer Music Group of the University of Montreal.

In 1990, he was selected as the first composer in residence at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for a period of three years. During this mandate, four of his works are created by the orchestra.

composer Walter Boudreau has signed to date about fifty works for orchestra, various ensembles and soloists, and a dozen film scores, theater, and two ballet music.

Leader conductor, he directed mainly contemporary works. Moreover, he is Artistic Director and Conductor of the Contemporary Music Society of Quebec (SMCQ) since April 1988 and Co, with Bouliane, the contemporary music festival of the Quebec Symphony Orchestra "Musique a présent". Walter Boudreau has been crowned by many awards including, in 2003, the Molson Prize awarded by the Canada Council for the Arts, a prestigious scholarship crowning the whole of his career and in 2004, the Denise-Pelletier's Prize for stage art (Prix du Québec), the highest award offered by the Quebec government in the areas of culture and science.

Imagine a cross between Xenakis, Pierre Boulez and Frank Zappa ... The raw energy of the first, the strangeness of the second iconoclastic and tight construction of the third ... Nervousness, electricity, power, breath, complexity into the microcosm that is the Walter Boudreau of L'odessée du soleil and of Demain les étoiles. Add irreverent complicity of the poet Raoul Duguay for Golgot (h) a.

NOTICE

The Grand Méridien was created on January 14, 2006 in Montreal by the Bozzini Quartet.
"In 1988, I composed the music for a documentary about Marie Décary which was about the presence of two artists (sculptors) in Canada at the Biennale in Venice.

Fascinated by the images of the filmmaker, depicting contemporary works parachuted in a setting of the Renaissance, steeped in history at will, I chose to use a base material along the lines of the music of that time while updating it with processing techniques developed patiently over the years. My choice fell on one of the 46 motets of Spanish composer Tomas Luis de Victoria (1548-1611) who lived in Venice and whose response to four voices "Tradiderunt Me In Manus" ("They delivered to hands of the wicked") I was immediately captivated. Subsequently, I decided to orchestrate some of this film music and develop it independently.

There followed six works, all based on the motet by Tomas Luis de Victoria, for various instrumental ensembles, from orchestra with soloist and choir (Le voyage) to the string quartet (The Grand Méridien) through the brass, organ, percussion and narrator (Golgot (h)).

Therefore in chronological order:
1-Tradiderunt Me In Manus Impiorum 1 (1990)
2-Golgot (h) (1991) (Prix Paul Gilson, Paris 1991)
3-Encore ces questions sans réponses ... (1991)
4-Tradiderunt Me In Manus Impiorum II (1992)
5-Le Voyage (1999-2002)
6-The Grand Méridien (2002)
Grand Meridian (The Grand "Nerf" Central ...) somehow ends this cycle of works in
a "baroque" character, through a process of settling where the extreme form and content is not only
together, but merge beyond the kaleidoscopic prism of references (icons)
historical and psychedelic intoxication of pure invention, to create an object "transmuted", carrying new meanings
equally as surprising as disturbing ... "

Duration: 28 minutes