For his first monographic album, Johan Farjot offers a programme of short pieces, for one to eight instruments (New York City, for double saxophone quartet). In this mix of concision and magic, we find the essence of the composer's interests. Perpetuum mobile, ostinatos, imitations, questions and quick responses: for the most part, the pieces on this album reveal his predilection for a systematic approach. But although he likes symmetry, he likes it just slightly abridged. If he repeats something, it is in order to introduce modifications, however infinitesimal. His clocks are broken, his obsessions are subverted from the interior by delays. If he explores non-modulatory climates, he spices them up with acidic notes. And more generally, if he uses stylistic vocabulary which has already been used by his predecessors, his way of combining it is never conventional.
A composer shaped by many influences, he is original in his way of producing an american lifeblood and serving it in a typically french melting pot. When he composes for a group, Farjot writes with a deep knowledge. Not against, but always for the instrument. Hence his predilection for open strings, which enhances string instruments and gives them an ancestral colour; hence also, his tendency to search for digital comfort and orgnanological idiosyncrasy. In all of his pieces, instrumental constraints are an added source of expression, stimulating the imagination. One has the impression that he has adopted as his own this phrase attributed to Oulipo: "liberated constraint". © Karol Beffa/Klarthe