All Videos Tagged Collard-Neven (The Visual Music Village) - The Visual Music Village

Petit Lou

2011-06-26T19:51:29.129Z

The music of this film, composed and interpreted by Jean-Philippe Collard-Neven, was born out of a need to exorcise a loss.
Similarly, the images came out of the pain and deep sorrow caused by learning of the death of two little girls, Alison (12) and Amélia (6).
They both drowned when Amélia fell into a swollen river and Alison jumped in to try to save her little sister.
I learned of that sad event while listening to this music, and the two became one.
The film is a feeble attempt at making visible what Yehudi Menuhin so beautifully said: "Each human being has the eternal duty of transforming what is hard and brutal into a subtle and tender offering, what is crude into refinement, what is ugly into beauty, ignorance into knowledge, confrontation into collaboration, thereby rediscovering the child's dream of a creative reality incessantly renewed by death, the servant of life, and by life, the servant of love."

Prelude

2011-06-23T15:27:59.378Z

This could have been called "Towards Scriabin" ("Vers Scriabin") given that Jean-Philippe Collard-Neven's improvisation on Scriabin's Prelude Opus 11 Nº 4 states the theme near the end of the piece.
It could also have been called "Scriabin Salvaged" ("Scriabin rescapé") as the quality of the audio, recorded during our concert "From Frescobaldi to Pollock, from Rembrandt to Steve Reich" ("De Frescobaldi à Pollock, de Rembrandt à Steve Reich") during the "Festival du nouveau cinéma" in Montréal, in October 2009, is indeed fairly poor.
But that was a very special moment (video excerpt available here: http://www.vimeo.com/9330345) and the emotions brought to life by Jean-Philippe's playing made me want to revisit the piece.
Again, the intention is not to wow anybody, it is not to show off technical "stuff" but rather, to try to find ways by which the images dialog with and serve the music, not trying to gain the upper hand.
There's no intention to "add" anything to the music, it obviously can stand on its own very well.
Yet, the music touches me in ways I am trying to make visible, however elusive that may be.
T. S. Eliot said it so well:
"Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to
conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot
hope
To emulate--but there is no competition--
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under
conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business."
(East Coker, excerpt from part IV)

"1+4+1"

2011-06-13T23:26:46.219Z

There's something very special about Jean-Philippe Collard-Neven's music, not only the music(s) he plays, but the music he composes as well.
We have started working together a few short years ago only, yet it feels to me like we have always worked together.
This piece, "Toi qui cours avec les loups" ("You who run with the wolves"), was written for a string quartet, and it was recorded by the magnificent Belgian ensemble, the "Quatuor Danel."
Here again, the challenge/goal is to find/create a dialog between the images and the music, without attempting to "show off" technical "stuff," but rather, to let things happen as it were "on their own."
Once again, as with other pieces we have done together (be they live performances or studio works), I find that Jean-Philippe's music "coule de source" (springs forth spontaneously?) and takes my images along (if I can refrain from interfering).
A far cry from all that "in-your-face" techno-plumbing indigestion invading our/my space, it is an ode to that which we (should) all cherish within ourselves (and share, make visible), our own little music...
This film premieres at the "Rendez-Vous du Cinéma Québécois" (Feb. 20, 2012, Montréal, Québec):
http://www.rvcq.com/festival-30e/programmation/films/1207/1-4-1

In darkness let me dwell

2011-06-04T15:01:42.470Z

Jean-Philppe Collard-Neven and I first worked with this beautiful music during our concert at the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma in Montréal, in October 2009 ("From Frescobaldi to Pollock, from Rembrandt to Steve Reich").
The music stayed with me and I finally revisited it using a studio version recorded by Jean-Philippe.
Am increasingly growing uninterested in the techno-plumbing approaches so prevalent today, am far more attracted to something akin to what is expressed in these words by Alberto Caeiro (Fernando Pessoa):

Lightly, lightly, very lightly,
A wind passes very lightly
And goes away, always very lightly.
And I don't know what I think
And I don't want to know

Impro Test 1

2010-06-16T18:39:59.000Z

Belgian pianist Jean-Philippe Collard-Neven is improvising while being filmed. The video has been rendered through Studio Artist (Paint Action Sequences) and further tweaked in Final Cut Pro.
This is part of a series of tests in preparation for working with video footage.