Alain Thibault

Thibault, Alain

Thibault, Alain. Composer, b Quebec City, 28 Dec 1956; B MUS composition (Montreal) 1983. He studied mainly at the University of Montreal and at Laval University and McGill University. Serge Garant, Denis Lorrain, Jean Piché, Marcelle Deschênes, Nil Parent, Alcides Lanza, and Paul Pedersen were among his teachers. In 1982 he won in the electroacoustic category, the CBC National Radio Competition for Young Composers for Sonergie, as well as the Roland Electronic Music Competition in Tokyo for Quarks' Muzik. In 1986 he won first prize of the Keyboard Magazine Sound Page Competition with 'God's Greatest Gift', an excerpt of his work OUT. In the summer of 1988 he took part in a computer music and analysis seminar directed by Pierre Boulez at IRCAM. In September 1988 his Le Soleil et l'acier, for soprano and tape, represented the CBC at the second Tribune of electroacoustic musics in Stockholm.

Equally interested in multi-media presentations, Thibault has collaborated with several visual artists for the sound track of several events such as Déca-danse (1983), E.L.V.I.S. (1985), OUT (1985-7), 1999 (1986) and Rivage à l'abandon (1990), which was déclared best stage music by the Association québécoise des critiques de théâtre. Thibault's music has been performed in Canada and abroad, in particular at SMCQ, NMC, the Festival international de musique expérimentale de Bourges (France) and in Tokyo. Some of his compositions appeared in 1990 on the CD Volt (empreintes DIGITAL es IMED-9003), among them Le Soleil et l'acier performed by Pauline Vaillancourt, and E.L.V.I.S., played by the Quatuor de saxophones de Montréal founded by Walter Boudreau. Thibault has taught electronic music at Concordia University (1984-5) and electroacoustic techniques at the University of Montreal (1984-8).