Experimental Music and Radio-art
As a music composer and radio artist, Létourneau's works are influenced by the principle of indeterminacy in music, chance music, intuitive music, noise music, sound poetry, text-sound composition, spectral music, non-standard use of musical instruments, traditional music from different cultures (especially Balinese gamelan), by the use of different systems of tuning involving the use of microtones which incorporate electronics and extended techniques. He also regularly constructs his own instruments and custom-built electronics.
He qualifies most of his works as site-specific (pieces to be performed or installed in a precise place) but also "time-specific" (pieces to be performed at specific time of the day or of the year). Since 1999, Létourneau has also involved himself with music composition and interpretation and as the creator of custom-made instruments which are used in his work with the sound performance trio mineminemine along with intermedia artists Magali Babin and Alexandre Saint-Onge. The group regularly presents mineminemine's work in America and Europe.
Since the mid-eighties, Létourneau's also performed works from other experimental music composers such as Alvin Lucier, John Cage and I Wayan Suweca. In 2000, he conducted a radio performance of the Symphony No. 5 by the Korean composer Nam June Paik for the CBC radio.
As a musician, he has collaborated with other composers including Sam Shalabi (Shalabi Effect), Roger Tellier Craig (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Et Sans), Joëlle Léandre, Jac Berrocal, John Berndt, Phill Niblock, Alexander MacSween, Michel Smith (Orchestre Vélo Karel), Helena Espvall, Jackie Blake, Dan Breen, Neil Wiernik (a.k.a. NAW), Réjean Beaucage, Marina Surbanovic and Jocelyne Gingras.
As an executive producer for the CBC radio, Létourneau also produced concert recordings of musicians and sound-performance artists such as Richard H. Kirk, Jean Dupuy, Thomas Buckner, Johanne Hétu, Brandon Labelle, Christof Migone, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Serge Pey, Sam Shalabi, Alexandre Saint-Onge, Roger Tellier-Craig and Joachim Montessuis.
Read more about this topic: Mineminemine
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