Jean Derome

One of Montreal’s most prominent presences within the musique actuelle community, saxophonist and composer Jean Derome helped launch the collective that operates under the Ambiances Magnétiques imprint. His studies at the College of Pataphysics and his receipt of the Freddie Stone Award in 1992 illuminate the distinctive fusion of playful absurdity and rigorous avant-garde jazz that characterizes his writing. Responding to a query from Coda Magazine about his musical identity, he stated, “I play music. Not jazz or anything else for that matter. Just music.”

Derome entered the world in Montreal in 1955 and began his formal training on flute at the Conservatoire de Musique du Québec. Between 1974 and 1983 he instructed students in flute and music theory at several local colleges. During those same years he expanded his instrumental palette, taking up alto and baritone saxophone before incorporating numerous handheld devices and everyday objects. Foundational experiences with the new-jazz trio Nébu, formed in 1973, and with the free-improvisation workshop Ensemble de Musiques Improvisées de Montréal (EMIM), begun in 1978, culminated in the 1983 establishment of Ambiances Magnétiques alongside René Lussier, André Duchesne, and Robert Marcel Lepage.

Among Derome’s earliest widely circulated recordings were the mid-1980s duo projects with Montreal guitarist Lussier that appeared under the name Les Granules. The pair had already started working together in 1978, creating soundtracks for the National Film Board of Canada; over the ensuing decades they maintained an extensive network of creative partnerships that positioned them among the most familiar figures in the city’s experimental music circles. Derome’s central role in the local scene was such that the label he co-created became virtually synonymous with the surrounding artistic milieu, often referred to simply as “the Ambiances Magnétiques crowd.” In contrast to many of his label associates, he waited several years before issuing a debut leader date, the 1988 Victo album Confitures de Gagaku.

At the beginning of the 1990s Derome assembled the playful ensemble Jean Derome et les Dangereux Zhoms, which has produced four albums and performed at numerous festivals. He also appears regularly with Les Patenteux du Québec and maintains ongoing partnerships with saxophonist Joane Hétu, director of Ambiances Magnétiques and Derome’s spouse. From the mid-1990s onward his work has encompassed both lighthearted collective ventures—Je Me Souviens, les Dangereux Zhoms, Canot-Camping, and Fanfare Pourpour (with and without the late Lars Hollmer, whose Looping Home Orchestra Derome joined)—and more conventional jazz settings such as the modern-creative Trio Derome Guilbeault Tanguay and the Thelonious Monk tribute group Évidence. Parallel activities include scores for theater and dance (La Bête, 3 Musiques Pour UBU) as well as abstract free improvisation (Nous Perçons les Oreilles). International collaborations have included work with British guitarist Fred Frith in Keep the Dog and with drummer Chris Cutler on the ReR recording Three Suites Piece. Derome’s first entirely unaccompanied album, Le Magasin de Tissu, appeared in 2001.

Having introduced Dangereux Zhoms at the tenth-anniversary opening concert of the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville (FIMAV) in 1992, Derome was invited to reconstitute an expanded version of the group for the festival’s twenty-fifth edition in 2008; the performance was later issued on the Victo album Plates-Formes et Traquenards. In recognition of his stature within Quebec’s creative-music community, May 2015 inaugurated Année Jean Derome 15-16, a twelve-month series of concerts and events centered on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday and surveying his activities as bandleader, composer, improviser, reed player, and flutist. The celebration opened with a twenty-piece realization of his “thematic game piece” “Résistances” on the first night of the thirty-first FIMAV, 14 May 2015. Later that year Ambiances Magnétiques released Musique du Chambres, 1992-2012, an album devoted to his compositional output.