The Cedar Presents
FLORE LAURENTIENNE with TBD special guest
Saturday, April 5, 2025/ Doors: 7:00 PM / Show: 8:00 PM
All Ages
Seated
$23 Advance, $28 Day of Show
This is a seated show with general admission, first-come-first-served seating. The Cedar is happy to reserve seats for patrons who require special seating accommodations. To request seating or other access accommodations, please go to our Access page.
For Cedar presented shows, online ticket sales typically end one hour before the door time, and then, based on availability, tickets will be available at the door.
LISTEN
"Flore Laurentienne - Full Performance (Live on KEXP)” Video courtesy of Flore Laurentienne
ABOUT THIS SHOW
Flore Laurentienne is an open window to the technicolor soundscapes of Mathieu David Gagnon – the Canadian/Québécois composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist. The result of a happy marriage between electronic and classically influenced music. The project is committed to constantly pushing back the boundaries between various musical genres such as ambient, experimental and progressive rock.
“Sophisticated, complex, organic sounds… Mathieu David Gagnon’s opus focuses on the range of sound colors and textures that analog Moog synthesizers can produce.” - La Presse
Flore Laurentienne
Flore Laurentienne is Mathieu David Gagnon – the composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist who shapes vast orchestral sound to interpret the rugged wilderness and waters of his native Québec. The namesake of an inventory documenting St. Lawrence Valley flora, Flore Laurentienne illumes the science and spirit of his surrounds through expansive string orchestrations melded with the textures and experimentation of early analogue synths.
Following the compass and critical acclaim of his Volume I debut, Flore Laurentienne returned in October 2022 with Volume II to resume his voyage into environment and emotion. Recorded with string and clarinet ensembles along with Gagnon’s signature modulation, Volume II explored forces of water as metaphorical markers to navigate passages of life and loss.
In his approach to composition hued by leitmotif and constraint, Gagnon challenges himself to extract beauty from simplicity in homage to the changing faces of natural landscapes. The presence of familiarity and flux in Volume I is heightened through the vivid instrumentation of a fifteen-piece string orchestra, which Gagnon brings together with an array of 1960s and 70s synthesizers, including the Minimoog Model D, the EMS Synthi and combo organs – an innately ambitious project which forges the composer’s distinctive path in the expansion of classical music archetypes.
Flore Laurentienne now announces his new album "8 tableaux" with a Spring 2025 tour. The composer, orchestrator, and musician draws inspiration from the works of Jean Paul Riopelle with this new offering.
Mathieu shares with us the creative process behind the new opus; 'Music is an art that unfolds over time, whereas painting captures a specific moment in the artist's creative flow. With 8 tableaux, I sought to give a musical form to a canvas.'
'But how to achieve this, how to freeze time in music? By basing the structure of the pieces on recurring cycles, one can make the ear believe that the music was there before and will also be there afterward. Without a beginning and without an end, only the freeze-frame remains, musically...
Following this approach, I quickly realized that both music and painting appeal to contemplation,’ he explains.
'Another concept I worked on with this record is the notion of randomness in music. Riopelle is often associated with the automatist movement. His great works from the 1950s rather evoke for me a romantic abstraction or even a grand organic and organized chaos (a link to be made with nature here). It is from this reflection that I tried to integrate the notion of controlled randomness or rather, chaos filtered by emotion,' concludes the composer.
To learn more about Flore Laurentienne: