Sylvain Monchocé — Multi-instrumentalist improviser

The importance of the breathing in the playing and the delicate use of silences structures the phrases and the musicality. Slow tempi and calmness bring out every subtle details inside the sounds produced as if they were put through a microscope. The high contrast in terms of dynamics articulates the density and the energy. All the instruments are used in an unconventional way allowing new combinations of sounds to shine. The overall sounds at times purely instrumental, at others like electronic music, and sometimes as something out of this world.

One of the specificity of being a multi-instrumentalist is to think all the instruments as one large instrument, with no difference in the way to approach them, with no separation between them, and to have the flexibility to switch from one to the other whenever it is needed. Multiple instruments playing can happen either in a continuity, to explore slow changes in the timbre differences between the instruments; or at the same time, giving the impression of several people playing together, putting in relief the complementarities of the instruments to enrich the timbre and the complexity of the sound. Every choice in the instrumentation only depends on the space created at a given moment and is carefully made with a profound musical reason.