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Jill Fraser has created this unabashed electronic orchestration of Scarbo, the last movement of Gaspard de la nuit, written for piano in 1908 by Maurice Ravel. Notoriously difficult to perform and loosely programmatic (based on Aloysuis Bertrand's 1836 poem Fantaisies à la manière de Rembrandt et de Callot). It's was Ravel's intention to craft a musical nightmare in every sense of the word: disorienting, terrifying, and unsettling, with Fraser's unapologetic electronics augmenting the madness of the original Bertrand poem:

Oh! how often have I heard and seen him, Scarbo, when at midnight the moon glitters in the sky like a silver shield on an azure banner strewn with golden bees.

How often have I heard his laughter buzz in the shadow of my alcove, and his fingernail grate on the silk of the curtains of my bed!

How often have I seen him alight on the floor, pirouette on a foot and roll through the room like the spindle fallen from the wand of a sorceress!

Do I think him vanished then? the dwarf grows between the moon and me like the belfry of a gothic cathedral, a golden bell shakes on his pointed cap!

But soon his body becomes blue, translucent like the wax of a candle, his face pales like the wax of a candle end – and suddenly he is extinguished.

Scarbo was part of the second wave of zZyzx pieces, premiered in Spring of 2017 at Gloria Delson Contemporary Arts in Los Angeles.

credits

from The zZyzx Society, released March 30, 2018
Maurice Ravel, arranged/orchestrated: Jill Fraser
original midi file by Bernd Krueger, graciously made available on Creative Commons

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The zZyzx Society Los Angeles, California

Go to zzyzxsociety.com for full liner notes, credits and artist bios

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