LLIBRE VERMELL revisitat

Originally, Le Livre Vermeil was a collection of 14th-century songs and dances that caught my ear and my heart a long time ago.

In April 2004, I decided to stage a duo concert with the Austrian singer Sandrine Rohrmoser at the Schauspielhaus Salzburg, in a hybrid form combining art-rock, electronic music and a mystical, festive medieval atmosphere.

We have taken total liberty with this repertoire, and I present it to you today as it was recorded live on one of the evenings in 2004. Some tracks have been slightly restored to meet today's listening standards.

T. Zaboitzeff

Line up

Sandrine Rohrmoser: Vocals and percussion

Thierry Zaboitzeff: Arrangements, composition, vocals, cello, bass guitar, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, percussion, loop-station, sampling, creation of soundscapes and backing tracks…

Recorded live at Schauspielhaus Salzburg in April 2004 and remastered in April 2025 by Thierry Zaboitzeff 

Liner notes: Denis Desassis

Album artwork: Thierry Moreau

Liner notes 

There's something mysterious - and miraculous too - in the deep beauty of these songs penned by anonymous composers, collected by monks in the late 14th century before being rescued from a fire in the monastery of Montserrat (Catalonia) in 1811. 

Ten hymns written in Catalan, Occitan and Latin, both pious and danceable, 

just because pilgrims were not supposed to fall asleep during night vigils. 

A few versions of Llibre Vermell have sublimated its mysticism, such as those by Jordi Savall in 1978 and 2013. Here's another, just as penetrating and resolutely contemporary, recorded some twenty years ago during a series of concerts at Salzburg's Schauspielhaus by Thierry Zaboitzeff, in duet with Austrian singer Sandrine Rohrmoser. 

Then what is the secret of the alchemy that naturally authorizes this musician 

to make music as distant as that of Llibre Vermell his own? No doubt the eternal nature of these songs echoes his own quest, the one he has given us to survey through a journey spanning more than half a century; a musical path being the expression of a crossing of the light and shadows of time, between rock, electro, contemporary music and classical or baroque influences. A multi-instrumentist and singer, architect of a cosmogony haunted by forces as incarnate as they are cerebral, Thierry Zaboitzeff can once again unfurl his colors to bring about his own fusion at the heart of a “red book” whose co-author he has become. Those who know him will find in this restored recording his own universe, at the crossroads of all those “worried spaces” he pursues with undiminished passion. It's a new invitation: to sing, to dance, to forget for a while the harshness of the world and glimpse its mystery in the contemplation of the infinite.

Denis Desassis