Biography
During the opening years of the 1970s, L'Infonie stood at the forefront of Montreal's countercultural surge. Intricate arrangements, a taste for spontaneous improvisation, flamboyant stage behavior, and a fusion of pop and spiritual thought combined to turn the group into a legendary presence within the city's experimental music past. Collectors across the globe still chase the four long-unavailable albums the band left behind.
The project began in 1967 through an encounter between two singular figures. Trumpeter and poet Raôul Duguay, born February 13, 1939, in Val d'Or, Quebec, and already the author of two books, met saxophonist Walter Boudreau at a poetry-music event in Montreal. Their immediate improvisations forged a lifelong alliance. The pair assembled L'Infonie, a jazz-rock orchestral workshop that usually numbered about a dozen players yet could swell to twenty-four, and soon appeared at nearly every artistic gathering in the city.
Duguay and Boudreau shaped a guiding philosophy for the ensemble drawn from Eastern traditions and the emerging currents that would later define the new age movement, in which Duguay would become a leading Quebec voice. Musicians appeared in togas and triangular hats while the founders repeatedly invoked the circumflex-accented letter O and the number three. These ideas were set out in the 1970 book Manifeste de l'Infonie, issued by Éditions du Jour. Visually, the group suggested a dadaist counterpart to Magma.
L'Infonie blended anarchic hippie exuberance with rigorous contemporary composition. Raôul Duguay's extreme gestures, which included taking the stage in bear-fur underwear and delivering extended vocal pieces built on repeated phonemes, were offset by Boudreau's classical background and growing engagement with composers such as Pierre Boulez, Edgar Varèse, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. The first album, released by Polydor in 1969, reflected the more extravagant, Duguay-centered side of the spectrum. That year Boudreau discovered Terry Riley's "In C," rearranged it for the ensemble, and they recorded the result as Mantra on Polydor in 1970. Also in 1970 the band delivered a striking performance at the filmed Nuit de la poésie 1970 poetry readings.
With the appearance of Vol. 333 on the Montreal label Kot'ai, the musicians reached their collective artistic summit, striking an equilibrium between their playful rock energy and their classical seriousness. The album includes the two-side epic "Paix" (Peace), widely viewed as L'Infonie's masterwork. Raôul Duguay soon departed to begin a thriving solo career. In 1974 Boudreau issued Vol. 3333, which contained a revised version of "Paix," still under the L'Infonie name, though the record was essentially a solo effort because the group had stopped regular activity after 1972. Boudreau went on to found the Société de Musique Contemporaine du Québec, which he continued to direct into the 2000s, drawing many former L'Infonie members into the organization. Drummer Ysengourd Knohr later joined singer/songwriter Plume Latraverse's band.
The project began in 1967 through an encounter between two singular figures. Trumpeter and poet Raôul Duguay, born February 13, 1939, in Val d'Or, Quebec, and already the author of two books, met saxophonist Walter Boudreau at a poetry-music event in Montreal. Their immediate improvisations forged a lifelong alliance. The pair assembled L'Infonie, a jazz-rock orchestral workshop that usually numbered about a dozen players yet could swell to twenty-four, and soon appeared at nearly every artistic gathering in the city.
Duguay and Boudreau shaped a guiding philosophy for the ensemble drawn from Eastern traditions and the emerging currents that would later define the new age movement, in which Duguay would become a leading Quebec voice. Musicians appeared in togas and triangular hats while the founders repeatedly invoked the circumflex-accented letter O and the number three. These ideas were set out in the 1970 book Manifeste de l'Infonie, issued by Éditions du Jour. Visually, the group suggested a dadaist counterpart to Magma.
L'Infonie blended anarchic hippie exuberance with rigorous contemporary composition. Raôul Duguay's extreme gestures, which included taking the stage in bear-fur underwear and delivering extended vocal pieces built on repeated phonemes, were offset by Boudreau's classical background and growing engagement with composers such as Pierre Boulez, Edgar Varèse, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. The first album, released by Polydor in 1969, reflected the more extravagant, Duguay-centered side of the spectrum. That year Boudreau discovered Terry Riley's "In C," rearranged it for the ensemble, and they recorded the result as Mantra on Polydor in 1970. Also in 1970 the band delivered a striking performance at the filmed Nuit de la poésie 1970 poetry readings.
With the appearance of Vol. 333 on the Montreal label Kot'ai, the musicians reached their collective artistic summit, striking an equilibrium between their playful rock energy and their classical seriousness. The album includes the two-side epic "Paix" (Peace), widely viewed as L'Infonie's masterwork. Raôul Duguay soon departed to begin a thriving solo career. In 1974 Boudreau issued Vol. 3333, which contained a revised version of "Paix," still under the L'Infonie name, though the record was essentially a solo effort because the group had stopped regular activity after 1972. Boudreau went on to found the Société de Musique Contemporaine du Québec, which he continued to direct into the 2000s, drawing many former L'Infonie members into the organization. Drummer Ysengourd Knohr later joined singer/songwriter Plume Latraverse's band.
Albums
