Guy Bergeron
Les Productions D’Oz: 7 pages
Canadian – born Bergeron is a new name to me personally. My loss! This book of five short but yet substantial pieces is really clever, very different in a number of ways, with plenty of jazz – like tinges in the harmonies, and a really involving set of pieces.
She Had To Go starts out innocently enough in a 3 / 4 Em, before at bar 17 suddenly taking off with some unexpected musical moments that I really didn’t see coming. It is all very playable, but doesn’t follow one of those many patterns that you can get with guitar music, and I laughed out loud at the extremely cheeky ending coda!
Vague a l’Ame, which translates as melancholy or blues, is bluesy in style, so the translation could be either! A dropped D and a slower speed to the previous makes it slightly easier, but again totally different and in its own style.
Never Without You is even slower but warm and emotional in its content, with a couple of tricky sets of passages involving chords, and yet again the harmonies take you on a journey you really don’t see coming.
La Rabiole, (which apparently is Turnip, in translation!), is a very swift, fun piece of writing set in triple time, but definitely too fast to call a waltz! One is required to land effortlessly on a number of chords along the way , in between some speedy runs of quavers , and it is this that makes this piece harder than the others, but again it was a piece I really enjoyed getting to know.
The final Irish Impression is in a gig – like 6/8 and has definitely ‘Irish’ moments in it, but tinged with Bergeron’s own sets of harmonies, and is another piece that is not an easy ride by any means.
This is an unexpected find, really fun to play, intermediate to difficult, depending on which piece you pick, but really worth getting to know. I am looking forward to more pieces from this writer!
Chris Dumigan