Stephan Labossier

We not only relied on interpretations of well-known standards, but also collected ideas for our own pieces in the run-up to the recordings, which bring our respective handwriting to life even more clearly. It was great fun to play our music, which was already recorded after two afternoons. The reason is that we always took the fresher sounding “first take”.

Hot on the heels of two successful albums (as leading member of Sonar w. David Torn), Swiss composer and guitarist Stephan Thelen presents his first named RareNoise release, World Dialogue. World Dialogue casts a light on Stephan Thelen's work as a contemporary classical composer. It features four works for String Quartet, composed over the last decade,performed by the Kronos Quartet and the Al Pari Quartet.'World Dialogue', 'Silesia' and 'Chaconne', composed between 2006 and 2018, were performed and recorded by the Al Pari Quartet in Berlin earlier this year. 'Circular Lines' was commissioned then performed in 2017 by the Kronos Quartet as part of their '50 For The Future: The KronosLearning Repertoire' series of commissions.

17th Century Wrocław (then Breslau) was one of Europe’s important musical centres. Its three main Protestant churches – St. Elisabeth, St. Mary Magdalene and St. Bernardine – collected extensive music libraries. Their repertoire was shaped both by prints imported from Italy and Germany, and by works composed by local cantors and organists employed in church ensembles. A separate collection of nearly 400 prints from 1610–55 remained in private hands. During World War II, however, they were taken away from the city and dispersed after 1945. Some items have not been found until now. The majority of the prints returned to Wrocław. Numerous manusripts were considered lost until the late 1980s, when they reappeared in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek. They found their way there from Moscow, where some items of the former Breslau library still remain.

It’s been two years since Sonar guitarist, composer Stephan Thelen has released a follow-up with the Fractal Guitar release. Last year he had done music for the RareNoise label with the Kronos Quartet and the All-Women ensemble, the Al Pari Quartet entitled, World Dialogue, and the continuation of the second volume of Transportation with Sonar. This year he’s back in the saddle again with Fractal Guitar 2 released on the MoonJune label. Recorded at various locations between Europe and North America in November 2019 and July 2020, Fractal Guitar 2 shows Thelen a sign of bringing some hope and strong freewill to those who are going through another rocky road since everything came to a screeching halt in March of last year…

Mention French music of the late 17th century, and the adjectives that come to mind are the same ones associated with the Louis XIV: splendid, imposing, ritualistic. The music of the era was exemplified by Lully's tightly controlled dramatic compositions and by massive church compositions. Both types were composed by Michel Lambert (1610-1696), but there was another side to music of the Sun King's era, and Lambert specialized in that. The air de cour, or court air, was intimate, romantic, subtle: everything that the Lully opera was not. And Lully himself composed music for quieter occasions, as well.