La Mystère Tisné II

So, a few days later, a package arrived.  In it was the piano reduction and orchestral score for a piece for Alto saxophone and orchestra:  "Ombres de Feu".  The name of a Polish saxophonist was crossed out, and my own name added.  Enclosed with the music was a card from the office of the Inspector for Music of the City of Paris, Tisné's official post.  It was one of many cards that I would receive over the years, always with the same tight handwriting.  This card contained an invitation to lunch at La Coupole in Paris with the composer.  I figured that I was moving up in the World.

La Coupole was a Left-bank institution.  In the 1990s, it had seen better days, but it was the kind of place where you could invite future collaborators to lunch and not feel that you were out of place.  Antoine, with his "Young French Intellectual Prize" from the Sixties, had obviously been going here for a very long time.  And he was welcomed like a longtime client.  We always had a good table, near the terrace.  The food wasn't very good, actually quite ordinary.  Actually, if truth be told!  La Coupole was rather seedy:  with the Dancing in the afternoons, there were gigolos for the older ladies on the Terrace.  There was a great deal of gay cruising as well.  Antoine seemed oblivious to it all.  And really, La Coupole was the only place that he could receive people.  His small apartment on the rue de Cotentin did not process a dining area....and plus, La Coupole seemed to suit him.  It was his element.

Antoine always invited one person to lunch.  There were others who were part of this ritual:  the flutist Marc Zuilli, Dominique Kim the Ondiste, the Poliste Celliste Barbara....and I'm sure many others.  The point was, nobody else knew who Antoine was seeing.  You only had your time one on one.  It was only at the end of his life, when he was dying of cancer, that I started seeing colleagues in his hospital room.  But when you were his guest for lunch, you were the greatest musician in the World.  What was amazing in our own relationship is that is we realized that we were a great tagteam.   He could do things that I couldn't....but I could do things that he couldn't.  And so we decided there, over a confit de canard which was perhaps a bit overdone, to become partners in crime.

So, "Ombres de Feu"...It was easy to set up a performance with piano.  I don't remember exactly how, but something happened and I had a concert at the FNAC in La Defense.  And my regular pianist was free, so we played the première with piano.  Piece of cake, huh?

But the orchestral version proved to be a bit more challenging.  Although Antoine had been a Music Inspector at the French cultural ministry for years, he had left that post in anger because....well, because it was just too much to bear.  I don't blame him:  I couldn't have done that either.  He had, though his political connections, gotten the post of Inspector of Music for the City of Paris.  And he did a very good job, doing the work of two (mainly because his colleague didn't do anything...so Antoine did two jobs for years.....)  But since he didn't have the kind of post that require respect, French orchestras were not longer interested in his music.  When a French musician (such as Jacques Mauger, the brilliant Trombone Virtuoso) called to talk about doing a new piece, it could work out.  The "Amérloque de Service" that I was did not fit the bill.  In once instance, a music director of a prominent regional orchestra hung up on me.  I told Antoine about this during one of our lunches.  I told him what I thought:  that it took just as much work to produce a recording as it did to get a concert done.....We decided to focus on a recording.

The problem was that I didn't completely understand at that point how music publishing worked...nor did I understand how recorded music worked.  This was another World, where some people were businessmen and others were artists.  I was (supposedly) an artist...so I didn't think that I could work as a businessman.  So I made some very stupid mistakes.

I had been to a concert with Laurent Petitgérard's orchestra where a work by Antoine had been premièred "Les Voiles de la Nuit".  The work was published by Eschig, which was directed (at the time) by the very competent Gérard Hugon.  I had a meeting with M. Hugon and spoke of my project.  I wanted to record Ombres de Feu, another work called "De la Nuit à L'Aurore" and also "Les Voiles de la Nuit".  After having worked with the Brno Philmaronic in giving the European première of Alexandre Rudajev's Soprano Saxophone Concerto, I had an agreement with the Brno Philharmonic to record these three works.  Hugon, was very nice, but was very clear that they would not be able to finance the project at all.  They did however agree to give us the rental materials for "Les Voiles de la Nuit" and to publish the two other works. It's been over twenty years, but just try and order these works through your local music store   They aren't available....nor will they ever be available. 

Antoine Tisné told me, over a lunch of overcooked Bœuf Bourguignon and noodles, that I should contact a record company in Lyons called REM.  A certain Monsieur Guillaubdy was the owner of this company.  They agreed to be the producers, but I would still have to find the money.  We had two leads:  Musiques Nouvelles de Liberté, directed by Benoît Duteurtre, and Musique Française d'Aujourd'hui, directed at the time by Pierre Vatteone.  Antoine had set up two meetings with these people.....and my spiel must have been effective because we suddenly had the money to do this project....My fee was paid by the Selmer company...except that Guillaubey of REM called Antoine at the last minute saying that I would have to have the sum due to the orchestra in cash or the project wouldn't work.  So, Antoine decided that he would give me the money in cash. 

Unfortunately, this was during the week when France change the 500 franc note to Pierre and Marie Curie.  So, when I got on the train to Prague, change to Brno and arrive at....Two something in the morning.....my pockets were full of bills that no one had ever seen before....And so here I was in Brno, without a credit card (and that wouldn't have been much help at three in the morning anyway.....) with tons of bills that looked fake to nearly anyone.  Here I was with my suitcase and two saxophones, knowing that I had to record at nine the next morning.....and not knowing how I was going to get to my hotel room.  Luckily, a friendly newsman changed enough money to Czech money to pay for cab fare....

And so here I was, at nine the next morning, recording this piece.  We did "De la Nuit à L'Aurore" that afternoon and then the next day we did "Les Voiles de la Nuit" 

A few weeks later, the DAT arrived.  I managed to get it transfered onto cassette and gave it to Antoine.  He called me that night, in tears.  He said that he had never heard his music like that.  That this was exactly what he had imagined.  It was a shining moment in my life.  This story could have ended here...