Celebrated composer, musician and producer Joseph Chester is announcing his new album ‘Au Revoir Tristesse’ for release June 13th via Bohemia Records.
The album features a suite of five pieces for classical guitar inspired by French author Françoise Sagan’s debut novel, Bonjour Tristesse. The piece was commissioned by Axis Ballymun and the Arts Council of Ireland. Along with the album announcement, he has also revealed that he will celebrate its release with an album launch gig on June 13th in the NCH Kevin Barry Room.
Tickets on sale now: https://www.nch.ie/all-events-listing/joseph-chester-au-revoir-tristesse-album-launch/
From the transporting circular motifs of ‘Une soie, énervante et douce (A silken web, languid and soft),’ to the final notes of ‘Les yeux fermés, bonjour tristesse, (Eyes closed, hello sadness)’ Joseph Chester’s latest album Au Revoir Tristesse (Cinq Bagatelles pour Guitare), brings you into a solitary musical contemplation that is overflowing with beauty and melancholy.
Joe is a veteran of the Irish music scene, as a producer, guitarist, singer, and songwriter whose art has shone bright in the loosely categorised pop, rock and folk worlds from his work with Gemma Hayes, The Waterboys, Sinéad O Connor, Ten Speed Racer, The Hedge Schools, his many critically acclaimed solo albums to his recent success as a member of A Lazarus Soul.
And here with Au Revoir Tristesse he continues his journey into classical guitar, a journey first embarked upon with his sublime guitar and strings album LUCIA, his homage to Lucia Joyce, daughter of the Irish writer James Joyce, whose heartbreaking story of artistry and a quest for beauty and expression was hampered by mental illness and her almost lifelong institutionalisation.
Joseph Chester’s latest body of work Au Revoir Tristesse is a homage to sadness, beauty and nature inspired by the French novelist Françoise Sagan’s debut novel, ‘Bonjour Tristesse,’ published when she was only 18 years old.
As the silken tones of ‘Une soie…’ fade to make way for the captivating waves of ‘La mer, son rhythm incessant (The sea, its incessant rhythm),’ you feel yourself carried and almost protected in the life raft of Joseph Chester’s deep musicality. ‘La mer, son rhythme incessant,’ takes us onwards in the arc to the astral harbour of ‘La lune, aimable et tranquille (The moon, kind and quiet),’ a glorious contemplation in two movements pausing halfway to take you to yet another dimension before bidding its farewell with the most delicately strummed note flutter.
It will make your heart stop.
‘La peur qui donne la main au désir (The fear that takes the hand of desire),’ starts delicately, then in its second movement increases the tension between the fear and desire. Then ‘Les yeux fermés, bonjour tristesse (Eyes closed, hello sadness),’ a tour de force in pulling at the gut heartstrings of Joseph Chester’s instrument which cascades over and around you like surges of pure emotion.
Au Revoir Tristesse is a body of work composed, and recorded with the creative skills of a master jeweller or an archetypal Swiss watchmaker, its inner workings intricately transmitting solitary musical mysteries with which Joseph Chester causes time to stand still.
About the album:
Commissioned by Axis Ballymun, Au Revoir Tristesse is Joseph Chester’s follow-up to his highly acclaimed 2023 album, LUCIA, his portrait for classical guitar and strings of Lucia Joyce.
Au Revoir Tristesse, which was composed over two years, consists of five bagatelles for solo guitar, inspired by French novelist Françoise Sagan’s debut, Bonjour Tristesse with each piece taking as its title a phrase from the book. Once the composition was completed, Chester asked his friend, violinist and artist, Steve Wickham if he would be interested in making a companion painting for each of the five pieces. The music and paintings were presented as a multi-media exhibition at Axis Ballymun in early 2025. A detail from one of the paintings features on the artwork of the album. To launch the exhibition, Chester performed the suite live, first at Smock Alley Theatre, then at Axis Ballymun.
Speaking of the new album, Chester says, “Au Revoir Tristesse is a homage to sadness in five movements. Our society is constantly telling us that if we are not happy that something must be wrong. But in fact, to live a full life, we must feel the whole spectrum of human emotions.
Besides, sadness can be beautiful and can teach us so much. We tend to think of it as the opposite of happiness but I think of sadness as being so much more than mere ordinary Unhappiness.
I have chosen the title “Au Revoir Tristesse” over, say “Adieu Tristesse” as its meaning is more nuanced. It means goodbye but really it’s Until I See You Again, Sadness. Having fought my own battles with depression over the years, I know this to be a fundamental truth – while you may banish sadness for now, it is always on the horizon, in the wings, waiting to make a reappearance. This is what I call the tyranny of happiness. Nature is a huge driving force in my music. To try to evoke phenomena in nature that may have become banal to us, like the night sky, the wind in the trees or the sound of the sea. Debussy said that music is the miraculous correspondence between nature and the imagination. I found Bonjour Tristesse to beautifully encapsulate this. Along with her descriptions of sadness, the delicious melancholy of youth, of solitude and the fatalism of first love, it was Françoise Sagan’s descriptions of nature – so visceral – from the moonlight shimmering on the water to the scent of pine cones in the forest which had such an effect on me.
You could say that Françoise Sagan’s own life was bookended by sadness. The luminous other-worldly brilliance and beauty of her debut, written when she was just 17, exploring “the sweet web of silk that separates you from others,” seemed with hindsight to prophecy the incredibly sad final years of her own life.
There is a deep vein that runs through Irish music and indeed through its ancient myths and storytelling from The Children of Lir to Dagda’s Harp, an embrace of the profound beauty to be found in that sweet web of silk, of dawn and memory. Sadness. ” Au Revoir Tristesse is released on Vinyl, CD and Digital on Bohemia Records on June 13th, 2025.
Joseph Chester will perform the suite plus a selection of other pieces by French and Irish composers as well as pieces from LUCIA at the National Concert Hall, Dublin (Kevin Barry Room) on June 13th, 2025. Tickets on sale from April 11th from nch.ie.
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