The 24 Chorals series stand as a fancy retrospective, a low fidelity portfolio, based on midi exports of existing scored pieces, plus revitalizations of abandoned sketches. The exports got then mixed with drumbeats, concrete sounds, spontaneous improvisations and sometimes with the original mock-ups. The 24 Chorals series is the fifth apparatus of the Showcase-Showdowns, a multifaceted project I started in 2019 to question the limits of æsthetic hybridations, settling absurd generic designs and arrangements. The reflexion encompassed both self-mockery and true shouts, in the senses that I have been embracing heterogeneity so much in my works that I wanted to self-disput my gimmick, oddly pushing it further, just to see. Secondly, in the sense that I had realized how always belated and picked up is the outcome of trends through cultural institutions and academies compared to the inner speeds, widths and fancies of raw creation, in terms of innovative combinations (of genres, mediums, techniques, disciplines, etc...). It isn't a scoop but worlds of art and culture seem as much connected as disconnected, especially when you take a look at the myriad of official calls, competitions and all lists of criteria that pathetically weed out the gifted goods from the happy bads, self-taught weirdos and grungy wackos. Doggone it !! Nonetheless, what I got to see is that if playfulness and some esthetic irony were the basis, once the composition started, only composition issues mattered through music consistency regardless of the original inputs. Consequently, unpredictable removals from the initial scheme happened, and that was finally the most essential sort of playfulness at stake, the one of life that is joyfully experimental and vagabond.

All compositions, improvisations, arrangements, editing and mixing by Nicolas Jacquot except Choral I theme (Bransle de Champagne, French trad.), Choral X and Choral XIII (Corsican traditional polyphonies) and Choral ⧒ (song from the French TV series P'tit Quinquin by Bruno Dumont).
 

paru le 30 avril 2022