The Dedalus Ensemble revisits the three pioneering works of ambient music.
With Discreet Music (1975), Music for Airports (1978) and Thursday Afternoon (1985), Brian Eno invented a new music genre, Ambient Music, which he defined as "able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting."
These versions performed and arranged by Dedalus Ensemble, according to the musicians and the critics who listened to it, goes beyond what we expect from it. A mental base that takes us far away. One of the only music without beginning or end in which we want to stay as long as possible.
Brian Eno (born 1948 in Woodbridge, Suffolk), Bristish musician, producer, visual artist and activist, first came to international prominence in the early seventies as a founding member of British band, Roxy Music, followed by a series of solo albums and collaborations. He is at the origin of the concept of ambient music, inspired by
Erik Satie's furniture music,
Cage's indeterminacy and
La Monte Young's drones, with a
series of compositions in the 1970s based on strict formal protocols bringing the listener into an enthralling world of sounds.
His work as producer includes albums with Talking Heads, Devo, U2,
Laurie Anderson, James, Jane Siberry and Coldplay, while his long list of collaborations include recordings with David Bowie, Jon Hassell,
Harold Budd, Robert Fripp,
David Toop,
Gavin Bryars,
Bill Laswell, John Cale, David Byrne, Grace Jones, Karl Hyde, James Blake and with his brother, Roger.
Brian Eno's visual experiments with light and video continue to parallel his musical career, with exhibitions and installations all over the globe. He has released dozens albums of his own music and exhibited extensively, as far afield as the Venice Biennale, St. Petersburg's Marble Palace, Ritan Park in Beijing, Arcos de Lapa in Rio de Janeiro and the sails of the Sydney Opera House.
Founded in 1996 by Didier Aschour, Dedalus (Didier Aschour, guitar; Amélie Berson, flute; Vincent Bouchot, voice;
Cyprien Busolini, viola; Eric Chalan, double bass;
Denis Chouillet, piano;
Stéphane Garin, percussion;
Thierry Madiot, trombone; Pierre-Stéphane Meugé, saxophone; Christian Pruvost, trumpet; Silvia Tarozzi, violin; Fabrice Villard, clarinet; Deborah Walker, cello) is a contemporary music ensemble based in Toulouse and associated with the
GMEA - Centre National de Création Musicale of Albi-Tarn. Dedalus is a champion of free instrumentation scores from the experimental contemporary music scene, and is organized as a collective in which arrangements, orchestrations and performances are developed in common. Its repertoire includes works by classics of minimalism (
Christian Wolff,
Phill Niblock,
Frederic Rzewski, Tom Johnson,
Moondog or Philip Glass), composers of the Wandelweiser movement (Michael Pisaro, Antoine Beuger or Jürg Frey), independent composers (Pascale Criton, Peter Ablinger, Jo Kondo,
Luc Ferrari), and commissions to a new generation of composers (Catherine Lamb,
Jean-Luc Guionnet,
Sébastien Roux).
