Ballade

It all began with the idea of an imaginary ‘standard’ one could well imagine straight out of a 1950s movie soundtrack. As the piece unfolds, the contour of some easy-going ballad seems to gradually take shape or, contrariwise, dissolve into blurred harmonies. Here, as in Martin Scorcese’s Taxi Driver, in which Bernard Herrmann’s music attempts to depict the main character’s schizophrenia, one quickly discerns a duality between the big band and the symphony orchestra, the latter attracting the former towards darker atmospheres or suddenly carrying it away in frenzied lyric flights. And so the form wavers between a traditional chorus with written or improvised elements arising from the instrumental ensembles and a symphonic poem featuring dialogues and duels between different musical genres. The most diverse musical worlds intertwine - and merge in the end. Possibly an allegory of my relationship with music…