Biography
Montreal's experimental and new-music community includes the comparatively young members of avant-garde quartet Rouge Ciel, whose grasp of musique actuelle reaches back more than three decades to its earliest roots. Rather than simply reviving an older strain of Quebec progressive music, the group has absorbed contemporary currents from both contemporaries and predecessors while asserting distinct individual voices and a singular group character. Violinist Guido Del Fabbro and guitarist Antonin Provost launched Rouge Ciel—meaning Sky Red—as a duo in 1996 during their high-school years. Within the following two years the project grew, at one point reaching sextet proportions, before stabilizing at its present quartet configuration of Del Fabbro, Provost, keyboardist Simon Lapointe, and drummer/trumpeter Némo Venba.
The band's self-titled first recording, issued in 2001 by the Monsieur Fauteux, M'Entendez-Vous? imprint, displayed remarkable range and polish, juxtaposing dense, multi-layered pieces that paradoxically retained a light touch with passages of jazz-inflected improvisation and occasional evocations of the rural folk pastoralism associated with Conventum. That foundational musique actuelle ensemble—guitarists André Duchesne and René Lussier, violinist Bernard Cormier, and bassist Jacques Laurin—had formed in 1978. Speaking with Marcello Marinone of Italy's AltrOck label, Del Fabbro identified jazz-rock and prog rock, along with material from the ECM and Windham Hill catalogs, as early touchstones. By the time of the debut's release, additional parallels had emerged: affinities with Conventum as well as with pioneering Rock in Opposition acts such as France's Art Zoyd (another 1978 formation, like Conventum), plus hints of Philip Glass-derived post-minimalism in the track "Les Fardeaux d'Hier."
Rouge Ciel returned in 2005 with Veuillez Procéder, again on Monsieur Fauteux, demonstrating further evolution through heightened jazz and fusion elements—most notably the nearly twelve-minute "Nevrealite Postparapsychophysiologique," the longest piece and, fittingly, the one with the longest title—alongside stronger noise and metal accents, chamber-like interludes, and discrete improvisational stretches. Even so, the quartet remained more oriented toward composition than many of its improvisation-oriented elders within the twenty-first-century musique actuelle milieu. The players' command of contrasting textures was evident in their instrumental flexibility: Venba alternated drums and percussion with trumpet and flügelhorn, Provost employed both electric and acoustic guitars, Lapointe shifted between piano and electric keyboards, and Del Fabbro supplemented violin with electronics, turntable, and mandolin, some of which had already appeared on the debut.
Del Fabbro has pursued a parallel solo career on Ambiances Magnetiques, issuing Carré de Sable in 2003 and Agrégats in 2007. Since the mid- to late 1990s he and Venba have also belonged to the celebratory big band Fanfare Pourpour, contributing to all three of its albums, among them the 2007 collaboration Karusell Musik with Lars Hollmer. Venba performs with the reggae/dub group Raw Sugga, while Lapointe serves as keyboardist in the musique actuelle-informed quintet Hiatus. Beyond recordings, Rouge Ciel has delivered notable performances, among them an appearance at the 2008 Guelph Jazz Festival in Ontario and a September 2009 slot at the Festival des Musiques Progressives de Montréal, where the band introduced material from its third album, Bryologie, released the following year by Monsieur Fauteux.
The band's self-titled first recording, issued in 2001 by the Monsieur Fauteux, M'Entendez-Vous? imprint, displayed remarkable range and polish, juxtaposing dense, multi-layered pieces that paradoxically retained a light touch with passages of jazz-inflected improvisation and occasional evocations of the rural folk pastoralism associated with Conventum. That foundational musique actuelle ensemble—guitarists André Duchesne and René Lussier, violinist Bernard Cormier, and bassist Jacques Laurin—had formed in 1978. Speaking with Marcello Marinone of Italy's AltrOck label, Del Fabbro identified jazz-rock and prog rock, along with material from the ECM and Windham Hill catalogs, as early touchstones. By the time of the debut's release, additional parallels had emerged: affinities with Conventum as well as with pioneering Rock in Opposition acts such as France's Art Zoyd (another 1978 formation, like Conventum), plus hints of Philip Glass-derived post-minimalism in the track "Les Fardeaux d'Hier."
Rouge Ciel returned in 2005 with Veuillez Procéder, again on Monsieur Fauteux, demonstrating further evolution through heightened jazz and fusion elements—most notably the nearly twelve-minute "Nevrealite Postparapsychophysiologique," the longest piece and, fittingly, the one with the longest title—alongside stronger noise and metal accents, chamber-like interludes, and discrete improvisational stretches. Even so, the quartet remained more oriented toward composition than many of its improvisation-oriented elders within the twenty-first-century musique actuelle milieu. The players' command of contrasting textures was evident in their instrumental flexibility: Venba alternated drums and percussion with trumpet and flügelhorn, Provost employed both electric and acoustic guitars, Lapointe shifted between piano and electric keyboards, and Del Fabbro supplemented violin with electronics, turntable, and mandolin, some of which had already appeared on the debut.
Del Fabbro has pursued a parallel solo career on Ambiances Magnetiques, issuing Carré de Sable in 2003 and Agrégats in 2007. Since the mid- to late 1990s he and Venba have also belonged to the celebratory big band Fanfare Pourpour, contributing to all three of its albums, among them the 2007 collaboration Karusell Musik with Lars Hollmer. Venba performs with the reggae/dub group Raw Sugga, while Lapointe serves as keyboardist in the musique actuelle-informed quintet Hiatus. Beyond recordings, Rouge Ciel has delivered notable performances, among them an appearance at the 2008 Guelph Jazz Festival in Ontario and a September 2009 slot at the Festival des Musiques Progressives de Montréal, where the band introduced material from its third album, Bryologie, released the following year by Monsieur Fauteux.
Albums