released April 19, 2024

Intimes exubérances is the culmination of a partnership between celebrated Montréal-based composer Patrick Giguère and Cheryl Duvall, a renowned pianist-interpreter based in Toronto.
It features a single album-length work from Giguère—his first substantial piece for solo piano.

The creative process behind the work involved a great deal of improvisation and direct contact with the piano, Giguère’s primary instrument, both of which impart the piece's singular feel. The form that unfolds throughout its almost one-hour duration is at once volatile and grounded, its restlessness tempered by a patient, almost meditative way of dispersing material. Giguère's extemporaization may have ultimately been formalized, but the resultant work carries an underlying momentum of spontaneity as well as the idiosyncratic expressiveness that characterizes improvisation. The music spans dim, spacious murmurs to explosive virtuosity but articulates these sizeable shifts in a manner that maintains mesmeric cohesiveness.

The piece's organic structure is also a product of the unique collaborative dynamic he cultivated with Duvall. Many parameters of the piece are given over to the pianist rather than being rigorously written out in the score. As such, its improvisatory impetus lives on in the performance with dynamics, tempi, and even certain rhythmic elements being subject to Duvall's input. The album serves as the follow-up to Duvall's debut recording, Harbour (2020, Redshift Records), which featured multiple piano works by fellow Canadian Anna Höstman and received considerable acclaim. - Nick Storring



Patrick Giguère is a musician and composer based in Montréal. He mostly writes music for acoustic instruments, from solos to orchestral works, but is increasingly interested in improvised musical practices and in making more and more space for collaboration within his creative process. His music is simultaneously personal but designed to be shared; meditative, but alive and intense; complex but direct; an object of contemplation but politically engaged. It is performed in the Americas and in Europe.

Highlights of his career include his work Laisser surgir, which was released on a Ravello Records album by percussionist David Therrien Brongo in 2023. His collaborative project émettre un son, vérifier sa propre existence was featured in the Picanto Festival of the Canadian Music Center in 2022. In 2021, Ensemble Paramirabo, Vincent Ranallo and Jean-François Daigneault premiered his ambitious vocal work Lui. His piece Revealing was recorded by François-Xavier Roth and the London Symphony Orchestra in 2020 and premiered by Susanna Mälkki in 2018 at the Barbican. He took part in the Generation 2018 Canadian Tour with ECM+ . His piece Le sel de la terre was broadcasted on BBC Radio 3 in 2017, recorded by Thin Edge New Music Collective and awarded the 3rd Serge-Garant Prize from the SOCAN Foundation in 2015. He also collaborated with the Bozzini Quartet, Aventa Ensemble, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Daniel Añez, Mark McGregor, and many more.

Toronto-based pianist Cheryl Duvall has established herself as one of Canada’s foremost contemporary music interpreters, immersing herself in a wide variety of compositional aesthetics and collaborative endeavours. Her lucid sense of contour, evocative sonic and emotional presence, and boundless versatility make her both a dynamic soloist and in-demand collaborator. Duvall has been presented as a solo performer by the likes of Innovations en concert, Suoni per il Popolo, The National Arts Centre, Bang On A Can, MTU Cork School Of Music (Ireland) University of Huddersfield (UK), and has toured and performed throughout Canada, Japan, Europe, Argentina and the U.S. In 2016, Duvall's artistry was recognized with a nomination for the KM Hunter Award. Her debut album Harbour, featuring music by Anna Höstman, received considerable acclaim and was broadcasted on CBC Radio, chosen as the #1 Modern Composition Recording of 2020 by The Wire Magazine and was nominated for Classical Composition of the Year at the JUNOs.