I discovered Terry's "IN C" sometime in 1969, as I was in Quebec City trying to convince a government official to help l'infonie get funding to survive. Since we were "weird" and totally bizarre, the man chose to give me an album (but not the grant...) that contained only one piece ("IN C"), obviously relieved to get rid of both the music and myself! Once I put the record on, I was immediately fascinated by the composition and particularly by the composer's nerve to produce a work, built on a single eight-note pulse, with no modulations and of an approximate duration of over forty minutes! As we say in french: quel culot!

Remember that those were the "hard" structural-complex-serial years (the early seventies) where one had to come up with the most complicated score and scientific explanations, in order to make up for the lack of music that was so evident in the twelve-tone chain gang extravaganzas. I was then studying musical analysis and composition and would attend the summer courses in Darmstadt the following year.

So yes, this piece was like a breath of fresh air, badly needed, sort of an oasis before moving on to other musical perspectives. L'Infonie's performance is, without any doubt, "funky" due in part to a slower tempo and it's big band instrumentation with saxophones, trumpets, horns, trombones and a rhythm section that was expanded with numerous percussion instruments.

One should note that the repeated three eight-note figures are performed as triplets, this because of an error in our reading of the score. (the stem had the eight-note transversal bar sitting under a number 3 over it, having us think of a triplet, rather than three eight-notes). I still think that the effect is great, even though it does not correspond exactly to the composers intent!

L'Infonie was at best, a "funky" assortment of musicians of different backgrounds and talent. Some played rock and roll, others classical music, you just name it. Levels of performance were hazardous, if not incontrolable. We were all young and making our way in the music world. Cracks, misses, faltering pitch can be heard during this (incomplete) rendition of the work. Today would be a completely different ball game. But this is what it sounded like 26 years ago in this small basement studio in the east-end Montreal, where the fumes of incense and other natural perfumes elevated our minds to the etheral reality of a unique musical experience.

--Walter Boudreau, March 33, 1996