L’OGR

Based in the northern tip of France is L’OGR, an ingenious guitar quartet that paints imaginary sound portraits of monsters.

Their compositional elements are drawn from what the monster evokes in us individually as well as from its representation and meaning in our collective imagination. They create music around legendary monsters, bringing them back to life through sound.

Members of the group include Sébastien Beaumont, Ivann Cruz, Raphaël Godeau, and Christian Vasseur. Beaumont started the ensemble in 2011.

Vasseur is the composer of their newest recorded piece, Le ceneri del filosopho.

Le ceneri del filosofo

The Italian Renaissance philosopher Giordano Bruno was a16th century philosopher and astronomer. He argued that the universe was infinite and challenged the dogmas of the Catholic religion, which in turn led to him being harassed in the Roman Inquisition.

Forced into exile, for 15 years he found refuge in several European countries before discreetly returning to Italy. He was turned in by his landlord and imprisoned for eight years before being burned alive in Rome in 1600.

“Le ceneri del filosofo” (the philosopher's ashes) is a tribute to Bruno, inspired by his life and work. The ten parts of this piece are impressionist and expressionist evocations of Bruno’s life and thought.

Christian Vasseur composed this piece. His composition calls for constrained freedom by the musicians. Each participant has latitude to shape parts within a pre-defined framework. Each instrument has a peculiar tuning, which adds to the piece’s dissonant ambience.

L’OGR’s instrumentation expands on the range of the modern guitar to evoke the lutes, archlutes, theorbos, chitarones, archicistras and harps that accompanied the nascent operas of Bruno’s day.

 
“The sound unfolds and traces around the silences… [it] generates a roundness which opens the space and expands it around an infinite, infinitely mobile hollow.”
— Christine Loisel