André Duchesne (musician)

André Duchesne (born 1949) is a Canadian experimental music guitarist and composer. He was a co-founder of Ambiances Magnétiques, a Canadian musical collective and record label, and formed several experimental music bands, including Conventum, Les 4 Guitaristes de l'Apocalypso-Bar and Locomotive. Duchesne has also released five solo albums.

André Duchesne was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1949. As a teenager he learnt acoustic guitar, but was not satisfied with the popular rock music being played at the time. In the mid-1970s he formed an avant-garde folk-rock group called Conventum with René Lussier, Jean Derome, Jean-Pierre Bouchard, Jacques Laurin, Bernard Cormier and poet Alain-Arthur Painchaud. Conventum was described by AllMusic as a mixture of "Quebec's folk roots with absurd poetry and progressive arrangements".^[1] They released two albums, À l'Affût d'un Complot in 1977 and Le Bureau Central des Utopies in 1979.^[1]

In 1983 Duchesne, Lussier, Derome and Robert M. Lepage formed Ambiances Magnétiques, a musical collective and artist-run record label specialising in avant-garde music. Duchesne released his first solo album, Le Temps des Bombes on the new label in 1984.^[1] Then he began writing contrapuntal compositions for a guitar quartet, and formed Les 4 Guitaristes de l'Apocalypso-Bar (The 4 Guitarists of the Apocalypso-Bar) with Lussier, Bouchard and Roger Boudreault to perform the pieces. Les 4 Guitaristes de l'Apocalypso-Bar was a concept band that Duchesne said was from post-apocalypse Canada "inspired by the ghost of Jimi Hendrix".^[2] They premiered at the 4th Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville (FIMAV) at Victoriaville, Quebec in October 1986,^[3] and continued until 1989, touring Canada, the United States and Europe. They also released two albums in 1987 and 1989.^[2]

After the success of Les 4 Guitaristes de l'Apocalypso-Bar,^[2] Duchesne returned to FIMAV in 1989 to premier "his most ambitious work ever",^[1] L' Ou 'L,^[4] a composition that explored different styles of chamber music. In 1991, he formed Locomotive with Claude Fradette and Rémi Leclerc, which also performed at FIMAV in 1991.^[5] Locomotive recorded an album of the same name in 1992, which AllMusic called "the pinnacle of André Duchesne's discography".^[6]

During the mid- to late-1990s, Duchesne formed several rock bands, but they never recorded. In 1999 he released Réflexions, an album of classical guitar solos,^[1] and in 2001, Polaroïde, a free improvisation session for guitar, viola and percussion. Duchesne returned to FIMAV for its 21st edition in 2004 to premier Cordes à danser, a new project of his featuring a string quartet and a "power trio" of guitar, bass and drums.^[7][8]

• Le Temps Des Bombes (1984)
• Le Royaume Ou L'Asile (Ambiances Magnetiques, 1990)
• L'Ou'L (Les Disques Victo, 1990)
• Locomotive (Ambiances Magnetiques, 1993)
• Reflexions (Ambiances Magnetiques, 1999)
• Polaroide (Ambiances Magnetiques, 2001)
• Arreter Les Machines (2006)
• Cordes A Danser...Suite Saguenayenne (Ambiances Magnetiques, 2006)
• Andre Duchesne Meets Bamberg with Matthias Kundmueller, Frank Taschner (Cavalli, 2006)