Tombstones - Michael Pisaro-Liu

Tombstones is a collection of twenty songs composed by American composer Michael Pisaro-Liu between 2006 and 2010, journeying into experimental pop with pieces that are "experimental or indeterminate but still a song".
 
Eleven of those songs are recorded under the artistic direction of the Lille-based pianist Barbara Dang. Dang and six members of the Muzzix collective recorded the pieces in June 2020, with Maryline Pruvost as the primary vocalist. This realization is poetically nuanced, ethereal, pop-influenced chamber music.

In 2024, the musicians record ‘Tombstones II’, the second part of this project that will came to life in 2025. This musical suite explores an expanded palette of sounds, introducing new timbres to the existing instruments and where silence, however noisy, is also considered as an instrument. The album will be released again on the American ‘Elsewhere’ label, in partnership with Circum-Disc and Atypeek Diffusion.

"If Michael Pisaro-Liu is known for the integration of silence in his music, notably within the group of Wandelweiser composers, it is remarkable to see to what extent this composer possesses great knowledge of very varied musical genres (classical, metal, harsh noise, rock, rap, etc.) With Tombstones, Pisaro-Liu links writing modes that are specific to his way of composing - such as experimentation and indeterminacy - to the most widespread form of music: the so-called popular song. The singularity of this collection lies in the fact that the eleven titles that make it up are taken from country or blues songs, and in the fact that the instrumentation, the interpretation as well as the duration of certain titles is left undetermined. This allows the performance to be conceived in different ways: a song can be stretched to the extreme to compose an entire concert, the collection can be interpreted in its entirety, and the orchestration and the number of musicians on stage can also vary from one song to another, or even from one performance to another." (Barbara Dang)

Duration : about 1h

Concerts

05/12/2021 : Release party at la malterie, Lille (France)
15/05/2019 : la malterie, Lille (France) | Creation
14/05/2019 : Eglise Saint Merry - Les Rendez-Vous Contemporains de Saint Merry, Paris (France) | Creation
10/12/2018 : public rehearsal at la malterie, Lille (France)
16/04/2018 : public rehearsal at la malterie, Lille (France)

Live concert without audience at la malterie (Lille, France) - June 2020