The Squid's Ear Magazine


Agnel, Sophie / John Butcher: RARE (Les Disques Victo)

Extraordinary and masterful performers Sophie Agnel (piano) and John Butcher (soprano & tenor saxophones) present a live recording from the 40th International Festival of Current Music in Victoriaville, Canada, featuring five improvised pieces that highlight their exceptional interplay and collective discovery of new musical forms while exploring the boundaries of free improvisation.
 

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Personnel:



Sophie Agnel-piano

John Butcher-soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone


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UPC: 777405013828

Label: Les Disques Victo
Catalog ID: VICCD138
Squidco Product Code: 35623

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2025
Country: Canada
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold 3 Panels
Recorded at the 40th International Festival of Current Musicin Victoriaville, Canada, on May 18th, 2024.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

Renowned improvisers Sophie Agnel (piano) and John Butcher (soprano and tenor saxophones) deliver a compelling live performance recorded on May 18, 2024, at the 40th International Festival of Current Music in Victoriaville, Canada. This album features five improvisational pieces ("rare i" through "rare v"), showcasing their exceptional interplay and attention to detail. Critics have lauded the duo's performance, noting their ability to continually discover new shapes and maintain incisive interaction without a false step.

Agnel and Butcher have a history of collaboration, including their 2022 album La Pierre Tachée, which was praised as "a kind of ideal duet, no imitation conversation but two simultaneous composers each repeatedly provoked and silenced, prodded and enchanted by the other."

Their continued partnership reflects a deep mutual understanding and a shared commitment to exploring the boundaries of free improvisation.

In this live recording, Agnel's prepared piano techniques intertwine seamlessly with Butcher's extended saxophone methods, creating a rich tapestry of sound that captivates and challenges the listener. This album stands as a testament to their mastery of real-time musical dialogue and their ability to push the limits of their instruments.


Artist Biographies

"If it's in Paris that Sophie Agnel was born in 1964, it is towards other sounding islands in the heart of a reinvented temporality that she dwells today, at the stern of a grand piano, an instrument that she turns into a real living & vibrating organism.

Classically trained, escaped from jazz (drawn away by the too strict treatment of harmony), Sophie Agnel boards the piano from every sonic angle this musical vessel can offer : keys, strings & board are simultaneously apprehended, in a mixed procedure (as we say of painting techniques) that would be understated if it was reduced to the cagian definition of the prepared piano. Considering the instrument - that she extends with several accessories, paper cups, balls or strings - as a poetic supplier of anamorphic textures, the musician takes it to be an equal match to the wider diversity of musical systems, whatever the craft they where conceived in (from physiological to electro-acoustic) ...

We would then no longer be surprised to notice her understandings with Michel Doneda and to find her to the side of the wet saxophone of Alessandro Bosetti, of the acoustified electric guitar of Olivier Benoit, of the voices of Catherine Jauniaux and Phil Minton, or the keyboard of Christine Wodraska...

The same seal of esthetic evidence marks all of her musical companionships, with this same taste, beyond the narrative, for the delicate sonic quests and blossoming of dimensions to which the auditor takes part through an active listening : in the heart of Jean Pallandre's phonographic worlds, of Jerôme Noetinger & Lionel Marchetti's small scale cinema, John Butcher or Axel Dörner's crimpy tissues, by the lovely machines of Erik M or Ikue Mori, the harmonico-stratospheric rustling of Stéphane Rives...

The originality of the research conducted by Sophie Agnel today leads her to develop, in solo or with significantly chosen companions, a most refined and highly poetic approach to sound that makes each of her concerts a moving construction filled with chiseled musical gestures, a soft and sumptuous irradiation."-Guillaume Tarche

-Sophie Agnel Website (http://sophieagnel.free.fr/biographie.html)
1/27/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"John Butcher's work ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multitracked pieces and explorations with feedback and extreme acoustics.Originally a physicist, he left academia in '82, and has since collaborated with hundreds of musicians - Derek Bailey, John Tilbury, John Stevens, The EX, Akio Suzuki, Gerry Hemingway, Polwechsel, Gino Robair, Rhodri Davies, Okkyung Lee, John Edwards, Toshi Nakamura, Paul Lovens, Eddie Prevost, Mark Sanders, Christian Marclay, Otomo Yoshihide, Phil Minton, and Andy Moor - to name a few.

He is well known as a solo performer who attempts to engage with the uniqueness of place. Resonant Spaces is a collection of site-specific performances collected during a tour of unusual locations in Scotland and the Orkney Islands.His first solo album, Thirteen Friendly Numbers, includes compositions for multitracked saxophones, whilst later solo CDs focus on live performance, composition, amplification and saxophone-controlled feedback.

HCMF has twice commissioned him to compose for his own large ensembles. Other commissions include for Elision (Australia), the Rova (USA) & Quasar (Canada) Saxophone Quartets, reconstructed Futurist Intonarumori (USA), "Tarab Cuts" (based on pre-WWII Arabic recordings, and shortlisted for the 2014 British Composer's Award) and "Good Liquor .." for the London Sinfonietta. In 2011 he received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists.

Recent groupings include The Apophonics with Robair and Edwards, Anemone with Peter Evans, Plume with Tony Buck & Magda Mayas and a trio with Okkyung Lee & Mark Sanders.Butcher values playing in occasional encounters - ranging from large groups such as Butch Morris' London Skyscraper and the EX Orkestra, to duo concerts with David Toop, Kevin Drumm, Claudia Binder, Paal Nilssen-Love, Thomas Lehn, Fred Frith, Keiji Haino, Ute Kangeisser, Matthew Shipp and Yuji Takahashi."

-John Butcher Website (http://www.johnbutcher.org.uk/Biog.html)
1/27/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Rare I 9:18

2. Rare II 18:16

3. Rare III 4:37

4. Rare IV 11:29

5. Rare V 5:17

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Free Improvisation
Collective & Free Improvsation
London & UK Improv & Related Scenes
Piano & Keyboards
Recordings by or featuring Reed & Wind Players
Duo Recordings
Instruments with Preparations
Victo
Staff Picks & Recommended Items
New in Improvised Music
Recent Releases and Best Sellers

Search for other titles on the label:
Les Disques Victo.


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