Nicolas Bernier – Les Arbres

Nicolas Bernier

CD – No Type
Acoustic and electronic sounds in ‘Les Arbres’ can be listened to in the form of a delicate but rigorous project, led by Nicolas Bernier, a composer able to activate symmetries between piano and environmental textures, developing intense and expanded melodic tunes. The Canadian author places different elements together in a very controlled manner, imposing more melodic passages alongside synthetic moments, resulting in a meticulously organized audio-transfiguration. Six tracks, each accompanied by an illustration by the visual artist Urban9, following in this case the idea of a network: silhouettes extracted from a photographic family album in the 40s are re-mounted on a similar greyish background with nice drawings of trees. An intimate set, with some obscure forms, is presented in this ‘sentimental bricolage’, both in visual and musical components. There is a perfect integration of sinuous emotional trajectories, mixed with surrounding sequences where there are also wind instruments, guitars and violins.