OVX020: Jozef Dumoulin / Vexations Vol.20

What Jozef says about his proposal:

"Since long I have been fascinated by the idea of very long static performances based on very limited musical material mixed with improvisation. Some years ago I became aware of Erik Satie’s Vexations and in 2017 I convinced the people at Le Petit Faucheux in Tours (France), where I was artist in residence at the time, to set up a musical happening around the piece. For 9 hours straight (more wasn’t possible due to logistics) we would play Vexations, and whoever felt like could come up and join us, to either play the ‘text’ or to improvise around it. This allowed for people with very different backgrounds of level and experience to play together, which relates to another zone of interest of mine.
The performance in Tours was an extremely enriching adventure, albeit a little stiff, that made me aware of a lot of things I had never payed attention to before.

One year later I got the chance to set up a similar happening around Satie’s Vexations at Werkplaats Walter in Brussels (Belgium), this time for a full 24 hours. Things were sufficiently loose there, and the place is connected to a big local network of artists, so a lot of different people of all ages, levels, and art-forms attended and participated, which made for an exhilarating and colourful event.

Now, when Alain Lefebvre proposed me to be part of the 21 artists performing 40 repetitions of Vexations for his Off label, I said yes without having a particular idea in mind about how I was going to proceed. But at some point it became an evidence for me that I was going to do it with my family. I have 9 sisters and 2 brothers, and by now there’s more than 30 grandchildren. I always wanted to record something with them, and this was a perfect opportunity. I knew that if I told “Ok, I’m just going to sit in our mother’s garden and play 40 repetitions of that piece, you can come and play with me”, they would most probably do it. And if they didn’t, it would still make for a cool field-recording at a meaningful place.

When the set date became closer, a new, very determining and loaded element showed up: it happened to coincide with quite destructive works on our childhood house, right next-doors of my mother’s house, where one of my brothers lives now. The works caused a lot of emotion for most of us, and plain distress for some. With my brother we decided that we’d play there, right on the remains of what used to be our living room. This, combined with the fact that it was the first time we all reunited since my mom’s 80th birthday party right before the pandemic, gave the whole thing a very special flavour. Almost everybody showed up, and a whole lot participated by playing or by just hanging around. I’m super grateful for that, and happy to have captured the moment.

As for the final sound file, I’ve let the entire field-recording as such but choose to add two elements: synths playing the exact written material, and 2 kind of randomly dispatched and unrelated piano-loops. Those piano-loops are there to honour Satie’s spirit, to get the whole object in a kind of up-in-te-air zone that is always dear to me, and as an expression of the love and affection I feel for the whole of my family.”

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Pianist Jozef Dumoulin (Belgium) redefined the Fender Rhodes keyboard through a scope that is at the same time fully contemporary, eclectic and highly personal. He was the first to present a full solo program featuring the instrument. Furthermore he is known for his open and luminous approach to the piano and to music in general, always anchored in tradition without being burdened by it. Besides the Fender Rhodes solo, his own projects include The Red Hill Orchestra (a trio with Ellery Eskelin and Dan Weiss) a duo with Benoît Delbecq and a post-punk guitar-band called Trojan Panda.

Highly-demanded as a sideman, Jozef Dumoulin has recorded and toured with the finest of musicians in the domain of jazz, improvised music, rock, classical and traditional music. He currently lives in Paris.
www.jozefdumoulin.com