Michel Doneda
Miettes (Book)
In reading this text, we rediscover the subtle pleasure we feel when listening to Michel Doneda's solo concerts. Beneath an apparent disorder in which intuition alone seems to guide the unfolding of a pointillist discourse, a highly structured thought process emerges.Never relinquishing primacy to the sensitive approach, Michel Doneda delivers a reflection on improvisation, tested by decades of uncompromising personal practice. Like his music, Doneda's writing gives pride of place to the quality…
Panzer Constellations
*In process of stocking* The music of Panzer Constellations was the result of a single occasion - by the invitation of After Action Review - to record a duo of soprano saxophones for the wonderful acoustics available at the former Heeresbekleidungsamt, Bernau - now an expansive abandoned building.
Miracle
Dovetailing and combining the rich harmonics of Michel Doneda's soprano and sopranino saxophone with Pascal Battus' rotating surfaces--mechanisms from small consumer electronics and their like put in motion and in contact with resonators and vibrators--this French improvising duo create fascinatingly shifting, unusual textures and sonic environments.
Cave Canes !
Michel Doneda, soprano and sopranino saxophones. Mathias Pontevia, horizontal drums. Ian Saboya, electric guitar. Recorded in 2014 at Novo Lokal in Bordeaux, France. 300 copies.
Tele.s.therion - Luzifers Abschied
Acousmatic black metal. A concept album based on the namesake fourth scene of «Samstag aus Licht», from the opera «Licht: die sieben Tage der Woche», composed by Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Concert public
Released in 1989. A few copies founded in the basement of the label. Michel Doneda (soprano saxophone), Daunik Lazro (alto saxophone), Lê Quan Ninh (percussion). “Here’s an exuberant early Session by three Artists who have become stalwarts of the European Free scene. Michel Doneda is by now almost a household name as a free improvisor considered by some one of the greatest living saxophonists. Lazro and Ninh le Quan , seem almost unjustly neglected by comparison. Le Quan in particular is one of …
Everybody Digs Michel Doneda
A collection of solo pieces from forward-thinking French soprano saxophonist Michel Doneda, using extended techniques and utilizing every inch of the horn, creating unconventional and captivating sonic expressions from the instrument.
M. Doneda, soprano saxophone, born in 1954, comes from the French South-West. He is a self-taught musician.In 1980 he founded in Toulouse a reed trio: HIC ET NUNC, a group that toured quite a lot in France, playing mostly improvised music. At the same time he fo…
The cigar that talks
Michel Doneda (saxophones), John Russell (guitar) and Roger Turner (percussion). Recorded at Studio Honolulu in France (2009). 'What story can a non-figurative music tell if not that of the men that made it ? The memory is adjusted to the shape of the present, the space is open to the need to communicate; the transparency of brass, steel and wood, of the flesh and of the soul, through which passes the evidence of an unfinished ancestral sound. The substance is fleeting and the incessant gestures…
s/t
Fred Frith, electric guitar. Michel Doneda, soprano and sopranino saxes. First meeting recorded live at Swissnex, San-Francisco (February 2009).
Linge
Michel Doneda, soprano saxophone and radio. Joris Rühl, clarinet. 'Le Linge was my grandparents' old farm in the East of France. It is there, in the barn full of old hay, abandoned wasp nests, murmurs and memories, in its sweltering, dusty heat, that we played for three days and recorded several sequences. We had no precise direction in mind for the record. We focused on the present moment, and then on the next. The barn's structure elegantly cracked with the wind, and the church bells brought t…
Sitting on your stairs
Lol Coxhill and Michel Doneda started playing soprano saxophone duets together in 2008. This improvised concert, recorded at Les Instantes Chavires near Paris in 2011, turned out to be their last musical meeting. Two musicians who manage to be themselves, stay out of each other's way, and yet make music together. Two fine improvisers at the top of their respective abilities.
Cristallisation
Over 4 hours of improvisations were recorded over these two days in april 2010. We then trimmed the sound sequences and the silence, while keeping our specific interactions and phrasing of sounds between us and with the location. But sound is a flexible material and what remains of this session are frequencies that are like vestiges to be reinvented. To help this there is some 'presence'. The acoustic character and the intense immobility that fill the air of the chapel of Las Planques, in the da…
beet5 / Nervures
Limited edition of 200 copies. beet5 takes Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto as its starting point. The slow movement was recorded using a special turntable for the blind that plays back records at quarter speed. I had an old recording of the piece lying around; I forget who the pianist was. The slowed down version was very striking, recognisable as Beethoven’s music but much sadder, more fragile. I developed a piece around this, using my usual array of synthesized sounds, field recordings, ‘borr…
Grape Skin
The trio of Michel Doneda, Christoph Schiller and Jonas Kocher performing music of delicate tension and great assurance recorded in the spectacular church at Ligerz, Switzerland. "Music of delicate tension and great assurance, recorded in 2010 in the spectacular church at Ligerz, overlooking Lake Biel in Switzerland. "The generous acoustic of the church influenced our playing. We had to deal with space and silence....I think you can hear that in our music" Jonas Kocher
Overdeveloped pigeons
'Limited to 200 copies. Music recorded at Castelmaurou (France) - April 20th, 2008 by Pierre-Olivier Boulant. Alessandra Rombolá: flutes, tiles and cheramic objects. Michel Doneda: soprano and sopranino sax, radio, objects. When I listen to the music of Alessandra Rombolá and Michel Doneda, I wonder if it's really necessary to know how, where and when the music was made, and with which instruments. Was it improvised, was it composed?. The music on this cd shines from the very start and one can …
Flore de cataclysmo
This trio features very distinct musical personalities and caught us off guard simply by its appearance at all, but we sure did smile when we heard it as we knew it would pack the goods. Both Zach (percussion) and Doneda (reeds) lay sturdy frameworks with Ielasi (guitar) adding an almost alien warmth to the group sound. Intense sonic impact yet transparent and sparse enough to navigate with alert senses, the whole disc has an ambitious arc that one may miss when caught in the web. Doneda's comme…
Placés dans l’air
Carried like a feather by the wind, crushed by the pressure unmistakably present, this soprano saxophone trio, sculptors of air columns, explorers of fullness, tamers of emptyness, plunges us in the complex relationship of three poets of the breath. It is recorded with a great attention by POB in a warehouse in Toulouse.
Breath on the floor
Alessandro Bosetti, soprano saxophone; Michel Doneda, soprano saxophone. Recorded in Castelmaurou on the floor of Adre L vocobs studio, nd. Cover drawing (reproduced above) by Alessandro Bosetti; design by Marcus Liebig.