Nuée

Nuée for piccolo and small mobile speakers is written for Marie-Hélène Breault. The show where it was featured included all-new works by women composers around the theme of Hildegard von Bingen.

In folio 220r, from Hildegard to the Community of Monks before 1173, she writes: “At the establishment of the world, You made the cloud the ascent of the living birds which dwell in the height of the air.” Nuée was first performed in the reverberant space of the Gesù Church in Montreal, where Marie-Hélène Breault’s piccolo soars above recordings of yak trains from around 5000 m in Nepal. These recordings and their transformations are played on small devices and moved around in space by a cloud of performers.