Between Rock and Contemporary Improvisation: 100 Guitares Sur Un Bateau Ivre To Release Album!
100 Guitares Sur Un Bateau Ivre (100 guitars on a drunken boat) is an evolutionary project created by Gilles Laval in 2017, composed for 100 electric guitars. The debut album titled Bateau Ivre is set to be released on the Daaganda Records label at the end of the month, on September 29, 2023.
The particularity of the project is to propose to each new “stopover” in a new city, a re-creation by calling on musicians and local structures. It is a co-construction and learning project for an “eco-poetic” creation on the theme of the ocean. Based on the french poem of Arthur Rimbaud, electric guitars – popular instrument – are used in all possible forms, to explore a contemporary writing dedicated to this creation.
Gilles Laval, from solo to writing for 100 electric guitars, from small to large groups, orchestras, not forgetting the augmented guitar with movement sensors, Gilles Laval explores new forms, researches new writings, initiates singular artistic adventures. He is the artistic director of the CM production association (creation and training). He created the GSUBI structure around his latest project 100 Guitares Sur Un Bateau Ivre to promote unusual and extraordinary musical projects.
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Gilles Laval started in underground groups in Lyon (punk new wave, hardcore, experimental...) in the 80', with parallel studies of electroacoustic music with Denis Dufour. Today, he navigates between experimental music, creation and improvisation, multi-arts encounters, digital arts, always in search of new experiences, claiming gender equality between scholarly or secular music, traditional music, popular music and contemporary music.
He teaches electric guitar and free improvisation at the Ecole Nationale de Musique de Villeurbanne, where he is in charge of the amplified music department. He also created the department and curriculum of popular music at Cefedem Rhône Alpes in 2000 (higher education). He is an active and founding member of PaaLabRes (Artistic Practices in Action, Research Laboratory).
Innovation, creation, concert, transmission, experience, research, pedagogy, are fundamental elements of its environment. With always this question: what is the role of the artist in today's society?