Le Passant

My work on Le Passant (The Vagrant) started in January of 1992 after a performance of another of my works (Extraits du Journal des Episodes) by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra at its annual New Music Festival. That older work was realized in the form of a diary, where I wrote one symphonic excerpt a day, a total of 366. In so doing, I wanted to demonstrate that continuity was not a matter of intellectual or theoretical procedures, but one that occurred out of the composer’s day-to-day life. With Le Passant, I followed an opposite procedure which was to write everything in a continuous short time span (about two weeks).

In the late nineties, however, I reduced the original symphonic score to the present instrumentation. Slowly, the idea of adding improvisers to the music grew. The goal of this work was not to achieve a blend between the orchestra and its written score with the four improvisers. It is about the meeting of two forces, the contact but mostly the resulting energy.

Unique in its own way, Le Passant is a confrontation between the worlds of through-composed music and free improvisation. In it, players of various backgrounds and experiences co-habit with each other in a series of complex relationships of varying scope. The very life of this piece is prefaced on balancing out the compositional and improvisational elements at play here. In the original score, I provided some composer notes in French, which roughly translate as follows: Le Passant. Triptych for Symphonic Orchestra. A wanderer for some, a traveller for others, the vagrant is an individual of differing appearances, but wherever he goes he leaves traces that inspire those alert enough to follow in his footsteps ».

Throughout my formative years, I always considered it paramount to find my own means of self-expression, and to do so in the name of that truth, even at the risk of challenging accepted norms, or to question it as I see fit.

– Michel Lambert

Le Passant

1. Le miroir de la vérité

2. L’éternal errant

3. Le labyrinthe du remords

4. Le choc spirituel

5. Le pèlerinage de l’humanité

Improvisations

6. Running in the cave

7. Quib

8. L’isolement des lignes

9. Faux-semblant