Gong Extensions

First part of the set: solo by Grégoire Tirtiaux 

This baritone sax solo is a polymorphous wave moving through the ocean of improvised music.

Grégoire Tirtiaux uses some of the many textures that can emerge from his baritone saxophone to bring out an echo of his nature in music and in life. The music can be travelling, meditative, polyphonic, imbued with the sounds of nature; it listens to the present time and all the vibrations that the air carries. The wind creeps in everywhere, and music follows.

The sound of the baritone sax can be used as a drone, a flute, a percussion, a distortion, a diphonic song, an accompaniment for the voice, a cluster...

Many techniques are used: circular breathing, the ney technique, multiphonics, quarter tones, harmonics, adding the voice, slap, etc. The musician brings out of his instrument an entire orchestra, a DJ set or traditional music from an unknown land.

 Second part of the set: Gong Extensions

Gong Extensions is a quartet of musicians, made up of three of the best Belgian blowers of their generation, including Grégoire Tirtiaux (alto and baritone saxophone), Sylvain Debaisieux (tenor saxophone) and Yann Lecollaire (bass clarinet), all practising circular breathing and flanked by Guillaume Vanespen on the bowed gong, an instrument that creates long notes, both high and low.

The music of Gong Extensions is a kind of meditative music made up of long, continuous notes that intermingle, superimpose, blend and transform, in turn, between light and shade, tension and relaxation, creating vast, colourful and contrasting soundscapes of transformation after transformation. 

 The music of Gong Extensions is a rare kind of music. It is spectral music in which the sound masses are sculpted in a ‘throbbing’ way, with a desire to extend time. Notes crossing each other in space can provoke special acoustic and natural effects, such as waves, vibrations and beats causing what are known as differential sounds, processes in which an audible note is created by the meeting of two other played notes.