Véronique Piron

shakuhachi - flutes en bambou

SILLAGE (2015)

VERONIQUE PIRON, shakuhachi
LYDIA DOMANCHI, piano
Invitée: FUMIE HIHARA*, koto-voix
Enregistré et mixé par Gérard Lhomme
studio et production Gimini 22, 2015

CD disponible ICI
Version digitale sur Bandcamp

Compositions en duo et en trio :
KUMOI JISHI / TSUKIYO* (Soundcloud) / JUSTE AVANT L'AUBE /
SOIR CALME, ACCOURENT LES VAGUES (Soundcloud)
CHAR DE LUNE *(Soundcloud) / SILLAGE /
OHOSHI-SAMA* / BRISE LEGERE, PLUME AU VENT (Youtube)

 Page du DUO

▪ CHRONIQUE : Patrice Verdure, Le Cri de l'Ormeau (l'Echo de la culture en Côtes d'Armor) oct.2015 p.5

Véronique Piron, tout en étant bretonne, est aussi une authentique ”maître”, formée au Japon, de Shakuhachi, cette flûte traditionnelle japonaise en bambou. Ce n’est pas pour autant que ça l’a fait renier sa culture d’origine. Elle n’a pas oublié qu’elle a aussi été par exemple flûtiste de jazz. Elle a trouvé un magnifique espace de créativité en travaillant avec Lydia Domancich. Cette grande dame du piano est aussi à l’aise dans le jazz que dans la musique contemporaine. Ce qui les réunit ici est une volonté de créer une musique innovante mêlant leurs diverses ouvertures. Le disque s’ouvre sur un traditionnel japonais où l’on sent le piano qui se fraye discrètement un chemin à sa rencontre. Tous les morceaux sont des créations des musiciennes, parmi lesquelles nous n’oublierons pas leur invitée, Fumie Hihara, au koto et à la voix. On assiste alors à une véritable rencontre fusionnelle, enthousiasmante, sentant toujours le Japon, mais fleurant aussi toujours le piano occidental, évoluant sur une inspiration nature, plantes, animaux, vents et marées. Un modèle d’intelligence musicale. Pat

▪ ARTICLE : Sillage, Mike McInerney (compositeur/musicologue/shakuhachi, UK)
…in the ESS Newsletter (European Shakuhachi Society), 2015 Vol2 p.56/57

I have thought for a long time that a convincing pairing of piano and shakuhachi would be difficult to achieve - the one a child of the industrial revolution with its high tension steel-strung frame, the other distinctly agrarian by comparison. The piano’s power and brilliance might easily overwhelm the sonic subtlety that is the hallmark of the shakuhachi’s language.

From the outset, it is clear that this will not be the case with Sillage. Track 1, a version of the honkyoku classic, Kumoi Jishi, brings immediately to mind Lewis Rowell’s lovely observation that Japanese music treasures the ‘studied avoidance of simultaneity’ for its ‘illusion of multiple superimposed tonal images’ - a beautiful effect, and one that sounds startlingly original on the piano. Such a stark beginning makes a statement about the album as a whole - that the shakuhachi is not going to fall over into a Western style folk code, and that the piano and its heritage are not going to dominate or lead the proceedings.

Sillage is an album of eight pieces that are neither fully through-composed nor completely improvised: a wise decision given the manifest tensions that exist between the two primary instruments. Instead, the three artists (the koto player Fumie Hihara joins Piron and Domancich on three of the eight tracks) have established a number of mutually credible sonic regions from which they have been able to build their varied collection of pieces.

Modality forms a key basis, sometimes providing a framework to kick against - adding chromatic density for extra expressive effect, for instance in the koto and shakuhachi duet Moon Chariot (track 6) and in track 3 Juste Avant l’Aube providing the much needed security beneath a shakuhachi solo so in love with its own noisiness that it might otherwise have descended into absurdity (to my taste, one of the most attractive moments on the album).
The final track Brise Legere, Plume au Vent makes recurrent use of the Western translation of the Indonesian Pelog scale (a mode that also occurs in Okinawan folk melodies): semitone, tone, major third, semitone, major third. Numerous pianists have tried this - making a gamelan effect on the piano by running a rippling upper melody in this scale across a lower Pokok core melody - but I have never heard one pull it off as well as Domancich does here, possibly because, by focusing on providing the backdrop to Piron’s foregrounded solo, she is able to concentrate on sustaining the mood while the shakuhachi carries the melodic interest.
Overall, the framework approach has been most effective when it allowed the musicians to revel in their spontaneity and skill. In the closing four minutes of track 4, Calm Night, Rush the Waves, for instance, one can hear in their use of nuance and sensitive timing, a genuine sense of exploration, presence in the moment and generosity running between the two principal performers.
Sillage has not proved that the incommensurability gap which exists between the piano and the shakuhachi has closed but it takes a different path. Throughout the album, the balance of force is by and large maintained by simply reining in the piano, which does leave an aftertaste - the image of a racehorse generously running with greyhounds. In the title track Sillage (track 6), Domancich more than makes up for this (one note, one string almost throughout) by her musical energy. Sillage is possibly the most exciting track on the album. There are, however, only two moments where the piano has truly been able to let rip. One is late on in Brise Legere as the spirit of the music expands, the other is at a similar point in Calm Night, Rush the Waves. These are the two longest tracks on the album: it is as if the pieces themselves have to attain a level of substance before the full might of the piano can be employed to provide the counterbalance.

What is clear, however, is the sympathy between the two lead performers - that they want to be in that room together, exploring. One can only hope that they continue to do so, working their way towards an unlikely goal that could be very compelling indeed.