His fifth album “Shimmering” recently enriched the Mind Travels collection of the label Ici d’Ailleurs, but the magnetic mantras, that French pianist Melaine Dalibert forges on his appreciated concerts, already attracted many lovers of contemporary piano minimalism, due to the way by which this composer manages to integrate an algorithmic approach to composition with popular motifs and influence. His alloy of personalistic flow and technical skills is so strong that even what sounded like pure exercises, such as “Music In An Octave”, one of the more interesting compositions (dedicated to David Sylvian) of his previous album “Cheminant”, can titillate listener’s soul. We decided to reach Melaine with some questions to give you the chance to know him and his awesome music better.
Chain D.L.K.: Hi Melaine! How are you doing?
Melaine Dalibert: Hi! I am very well, thanks!
Chain D.L.K.: How did you fall in love with the piano in general and with the piano you like to play with?
Melaine Dalibert: To tell the truth, I first fell in love with music before becoming interested in the piano. As far as I remember, my first musical emotions followed a few folk songs that my father listened to, the Allegretto from Beethoven’s 7th symphony… The first years of learning the piano were rather tedious. It was not until adolescence that this practice of the instrument became essential by working in particular on the concerto in G major by Maurice Ravel, an immense aesthetic shock when I was 15 years old.
Chain D.L.K.: Do you remember the first piano piece you learned and your emotions then? Besides classics, what are the main stages that bring you to the current approach to score?
Melaine Dalibert: The first emotions felt at the piano surely date back to the time when I was not yet reading music, but reproducing it by ear. I was about 5 years old, on a small electric keyboard, and I reproduced the melodies that seduced me.
I feed on many musical sources. If the classical repertoire became very important to me during my years of training at the conservatory, I do not deny that my whole childhood was bathed in rather folk and rock music. This side of music, which I put aside a little like a young adult when I perfected my piano learning, has become more important to me again in recent years. Jazz was also very important to me, like oral traditional music, from all cultural horizons. Generally speaking, I’m not in search of sophistication, I’m more attracted to simplicity, in the sense of a certain economy of material.
Chain D.L.K.: Some reviewers defined your way of composing by matching it to a supposed passion for mathematics. There’s a lot of mathematics in music, it’s quite known, but would you consider music composition just a mathematical process?
Melaine Dalibert: Of course not, making or creating music cannot be reduced to a mathematical operation. But the mathematical discipline has served me a lot in the development of algorithms, which are the basis of many of my compositions. If my creative work has been open for two years to a more intuitive approach, most of my pieces are based on very strict processes, like fractals models.
Chain D.L.K.: The very first record by yours I heard was “Ressac”. I enjoyed listening to it while reading some novels by Thomas Bernhard, as in my opinion the music perfectly suited the mood of some writings by this author. Any word about the creative process behind that release that I listened to so many times? Any situation when you suggest I should listen to it one more time?
Melaine Dalibert: My composition Ressac is precisely one of these algorithmic compositions. It consists of a long sequence of scattered notes, creating a harmonic halo that modulates over a time that is gradually stretched out longer and longer. For me, it’s a non-descriptive piece, both harmonious and chaotic, and its calm unpredictability brings it closer to “ambient” music that can accompany all kinds of moments in our lives.
Chain D.L.K.: Another listen of outputs signed by you is actually a co-signed track on a compilation. The track, if I remember well, was titled “Aphelion” and was performed together with Echo Collective-co founder Margaret Hermant. I remember I tried to search for something else, but I could have missed some elements during the search. Is this collaboration going to be reprised?
Melaine Dalibert: Indeed, I answered last year the request from the German label 7K to write a composition for a compilation; in this piece, I proposed to my friend Margaret Hermant to underline with her violin some melodic motifs, a way also to announce her contribution to the upcoming album “Shimmering” where she appears on four titles.
Chain D.L.K.: Maybe the release where the above-mentioned connection with mathematics was “Cheminant”, wasn’t it? Any word about that awesome album?
Melaine Dalibert: In fact, “Cheminant” is probably the album that best illustrates my attraction to mathematical systems, although the previous ones (“Four pieces for piano”, “Ressac”, “Musique Pour Le Lever Du Jour”) and my last one (“Night Blossoms”) stem from the same concern.
What is undoubtedly remarkable about this album, is a stabilization of the harmony in a diatonic universe, and a tightening of the formats of the pieces, to create a certain narration. We find on this album very calm compositions, but also more lively, which was new in my production.
Chain D.L.K.: Let’s focus on the present time, then! I see that “Shimmering” is already gaining good listening results. Its placement in the Mind Travel series by Ici d’Ailleurs is well guessed. How did you land on the label?
Melaine Dalibert: The signature on the Ici d’Ailleurs / Mind Travels label came after discussions about music with Stephane Gregoire. After having produced five albums in the UK and the United States for the excellent labels Another Timbre and Elsewhere Music, I wanted to offer my music to a label closer to me geographically, to make it more easily circular around me, in Europe. Being pianist of Ensemble 0, and a close collaborator of Sylvain Chauveau, it seemed natural to me to offer my music to this well-known French label that had already published this Ensemble and artist. This label also represents for me, through the artists it distributes, an ideal balance between different aesthetics, which have their roots in both popular and contemporary music.
Chain D.L.K.: Compared to other albums, I noticed more ‘brio’ and maybe more fluid dynamics. Can you tell us the connections (besides the author, of course!) between “Shimmering” and your past releases, if there are any?
Melaine Dalibert: The compositions that make up the album “shimmering” were all written during the start of the Covid crisis. For me, it was a moment when I thought a lot about the way I envisaged the concert, and in particular about what distinguishes a discographic project and a “live” project. Let’s say that this new repertoire, I designed as a material more conducive to sharing on stage, which requires a certain density, energy. I think I can achieve a balance in my production, by linking my most radical compositions with these more “pop” pieces. This dialectic between two different techniques interests me a lot, as can be seen in the production of a visual artist like Gerhard Richter, who works as much in abstraction as in ultra-realism.
Chain D.L.K.: Why did you choose “Six + Six” as a single extracted from the album? The fact there’s an Epilogue (lovely track) can suggest there’s a kind of plot behind “Shimmering”. If so, can you tell us a bit more about it?
Melaine Dalibert: This piece is precisely for me an example of balance between systematism (harmony stems from strictly parallel chords) and melodic intuition. Probably a good self-portrait of the present moment! It’s a piece that I dedicated to the great French pianist Vanessa Wagner, who plays it wonderfully!
I hope that this album will be perceived as an elegant sequence of moods; nevertheless, I didn’t really premeditate a narration: I believe that everyone should feel free to let their imagination run wild while listening. I called this final piece “epilogue” because it carries with it a certain fatality, which is linked to the ressace of a melodic motif that calls for appeasement, for acceptance. For me, that of leaving the voice to intuition.
Chain D.L.K.: I also enjoyed the wear of this album. Can you tell us a bit more about the cover artwork?
Melaine Dalibert: The artwork is signed by Francis Meslet, who gives a visual unity to the “mind travels” series with his singular talent. His work essentially focuses on the effects of time on buildings that are often abandoned by civilization. On the cover of my album, you can see an interlacing of vaults of a religious building, which echoes the patterns that run through my music.
Chain D.L.K.: Are you going to bring “Shimmering” on the live stage? Any work in progress?
Melaine Dalibert: Yes, some dates are already planned for spring and summer, and I hope that this outing will occasion others! Sharing live music is for me the culmination of the creative process.
Always, yes! New algorithmic compositions and field recordings occupy my mind a lot at the moment.
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