Street Music, for plugged viola

In 2009, at the request of viola player Vincent Royer, Jean-Luc Fafchamps wrote Street Music, for plugged viola. The piece, designed to be performed in a public place, uses “pop” electronics (loop effects pedals, guitar amp) to play hide and seek with the atmospheres and sounds of the city. When the Sub Rosa label decided to release the music, it quickly became apparent that a simple audio recording would suffer from the lack of visual and sonic context : the city, passers-by,…

Jean-Luc Fafchamps thus asked Manon de Boer, with whom he had collaborated on Two Times 4’33 to make a film with the piece. The elements of this recording are minimal, like the music piece which consists in very simple loops gradually accumulated : a camera running on a tripod in a slow 360° pan, as well as inserted hand-held shots. This is the result of the recording of a contextual project : Street Music, for plugged viola by Vincent Royer, June 30 2013, in the afternoon, Mont-des-Arts (Brussels).