A flight over inner thoughts…

What’s on your mind?

I was charmed and inspired by the expression “micro-trottoir” [literally: sidewalk microphone], which like “vox-pop” describes short on-the-spot interviews that often take place on the street.

Micro-trottoir is a radio work about the fascinating world of confrontation and is made of onomatopoeias and the voices of persons from various ethnic and economic horizons. These “micro-trottoirs” done by Isabelle Tanguay collected divergent opinions on news topics, lifestyles, dreams and disillusions from a number of generations and characters. Stacks of words — the heartbeat of the world around us — revealed the richness of speaking voices: timbre (airy, soft, loud, aggressive, lively, rough, low, high); accents and tongues. The piece also uses real ambient sounds (street, park, cafe, market); made-up ambiences (the dream); electronic transformations of voices; electronic sounds; and repetitive rhythms.

— Roxanne Turcotte [English translation: François Couture, vi-03]

Micro-trottoir was realized in 1996-97 and revised in 2002 at the composer’s studio (Studio Séducson) in Montréal with the help of the Canada Council for the Arts (CCA) and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ). Thanks to Isabelle Tanguay and Mario Gauthier (excerpt from an interview broadcasted in 1985 on the program Musique actuelle produced by Hélène Prévost for the Société Radio-Canada radio).