A reverberation of 20 cellos

"I moved from the intense, noisy city of Buenos Aires - which never sleeps and whose multiple layers of sound are very present - to Bern, in an isolated neighborhood facing the forest - probably the quietest country I've ever known. This shock pushed me to inhabit this silence, and undoubtedly affected the music I composed during this period, for example for In/Out "laughs Violeta Garcia, an Argentinian musician who has just released a streamlined album for solo cello on the Geneva-based Bongo Joe label.

Indeed, she was known for her activity in extreme sonic bangs. On the one hand, contemporary experimentation, rich in improvisation and sound research, which manifests itself in solo works that are inhabited, but sometimes difficult, intense, and not always easy to perform. listener-friendly on the other hand, an abrasive career with his experimental punk band Blanco Teta. This new, highly consonant album, suspended in drone-music illuminated by a pronounced inner lyricism, is said to have emerged from this migration and change of life. You can feel it: an intimate song is revealed, powerfully natural, and of great beauty.

"I started listening to other types of music, sounds, connecting with nature. My listening has broadened - or narrowed, I don't know - but I've found a great sensitivity that I don't yet realize," she explains.

The sacred minimalism of Pärt, whom she listened to a great deal on her latest tour of the Baltic States, plays a part in this, but not only: the very special place where the album was recorded also has its share of responsibility. In/Out is indeed acoustically stunning: on first, inattentive listening, one might suspect the use of a whole range of machinery and effects to create that characteristic sound bubble; but if you put your ear to the ground, you begin to dismiss these possibilities.

"I can confirm that this is a purely acoustic recording. We recorded in a cistern that once contained the city of Geneva's water supply. As it still contains a lot of moisture in its walls and columns, the reverberation is very special and magical," explains Violeta. The unique recording took place in the dark, in this old cistern in Geneva's Bois de la Bâtie, beneath the animal park that locals know so well - a peacock can be heard participating in one of the tracks. A natural reverberation with 28 seconds of resonance decay time creates a rather special and unique atmosphere: "I began to understand that if I changed notes every second, I could compose as if I were playing with almost 20 cellos". This is the challenge for future performances of this repertoire: to recreate the natural sonority of the site with an ensemble of acoustic instruments, or, as was the case for the presentation of the album at the Archipel festival, to recreate the spatialization of this acoustic specificity with digital processors.

Violeta Garcia : In/Out. Bongo Joe BJR109