6-8/60 - Keyboard Piece 1

Keyboard Piece 1 is a composition for keyboard. Any keyboard. Piano, harpsichord, accordion, electric guitar, steel drums, tuned gongs, or more. The score indicates the notes and rhythm. Dynamics, articulation, and timbre are left up to the performer.
Here is a synthesizer recorded version (hit play to listen.)

The piece is in 3 parts, approximately:

• 1st minute: Kyrie
• 2nd minute: Christe
• 3rd minute: Kyrie

Dedication and Inspiration

This piece constitutes minutes 6, 7, and 8 of the 60/60 project. I am honored to dedicate this music to Bert Van Herck and Brigitte Urien.
Bert Van Herck is a great Belgian composer. Listen to his recent piano composition Méandres on pianist Seda Röder's web site.

When composing, I found inspiration in:

• Debussy's La Mer. Composer Magnus Lindberg revealed us a little secret: he always composes with the scores of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps and Debussy's La Mer on his desk. He is thus able to look for ideas inside, in case he is stuck. I already owned the score of Le Sacre du Printemps, I needed this of La Mer! This story gave me the idea of copying elements from other sources, as you will see.
• Michala Petri and Keith Jarrett's Haendel recording. This present incited me to write a keyboard piece.
• Palestrina. In this 2-CD set, I chose the piece with the duration the closest to 3 minutes: the Kyrie of the Missa Brevis. The plan for Keyboard Piece 1 is modeled after it, including the complete counterpoint from the first minute.
• Finally, harmonic and melodic aspects of the piece were inspired by Bert Van Herck's orchestral piece Nessuno Sentiva:

This beautiful work won the competition to be played in an orchestral concert at Harvard Music Department in the Fall of 2006. Here is the clarinet melody on the first page of the score:

60/60 Project

Many thanks to all the participants! I will publish the next minutes soon!
Feel free to participate, and get a minute of music dedicated to you: check the announcement page of the 60/60 composition project.

Beautiful accordion picture is released under a licence Creative Commons by-nc-nd by orbitgal.

Ensemble New Flore - 2001 to 2005

Do you know the Wayback Machine? It automatically archives the content of web sites. On the site, you can visit web sites as they were several years ago. I just discovered this service, and I had a look at the www.newflore.org archive.

I founded the Ensemble New Flore in 2001, and we produced musical shows until 2005, when I moved to Cambridge, USA.
With a great team of artists and technicians, we performed shows in France, Switzerland and Poland:

• 2001: Autour du Zodiaque
• 2002: Danse Orange
• 2003: Nowa muzyka
• 2003 - 2004: évolutive 1 2 3
• 2004: Spirales
• 2005: Lieu II

It was a privilege to work with the following artists over these years: Jean-Luc Tartera and Maurice Gabioud (actors), Franck Cottet-Dumoulin and Jean-Daniel Hégé (double bass), Alice Gervais-Ragu (dance), Édith Le Rôle and Brenda Ohana (percussion), Elsa Biston (live electronics and sound diffusion), Paul Lienhard and Amandine Grevoz (highly competent technicians).

So much fun

Leading the Ensemble New Flore was an extraordinary experience. For me and a very close team of 3 persons, that was the occasion to learn about many interesting domains, such as: accounting, booking, border crossing, brazing, buying audio equipment, catering, chemistry, dance floors, driving small trucks, flight cases, French labour regulations, human relations, live sound, lighting, making a pitch, mixing, percussion instruments, press, printing techniques, renting vehicles, seam, scheduling rehearsals, short wave receivers, tax regulations, web design... (yes, this list looks close to Justin Boland's list of skills.)

More archives

Another way of going back to 2004 is to search the archives of newspapers. Here is an article written by Antoine Wicker before our 2004 Spirales tour:

To read more, here is another article from the Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace:
"Un compositeur inspiré" (an inspired composer,) from November 2003.

Dudley House Jazz Bands - Concert!

Since September 2007, I have been leading the Dudley House Jazz Bands at Harvard University. I am a so-called "Dudley Fellow", and my exciting job includes leading a full Big Band, taking care of a smaller and freer Improvisation Workshop, and organizing the concerts.

You are invited to our winter concert: Wednesday, February 20th at Dudley House, 8:45 p.m. Free.

Public rehearsal

On December 12th, 2007, Nathan (bass) brought a recorder to the rehearsal. Hit the button "play" to hear Chant Bien Fatal by Maurice Merle.

You are listening to:

• Michael Heller, alto sax
• Alan Lenarcic, tenor sax
• Jean-François Charles, contrabass clarinet
• Nathan Fosse, piano
• Nathan Haselby, upright bass
• Dan Jeffs, drums

Program of the concert

• Big Band
• Egyptian (Carla Bley)
• All of Me (Simons & Marks)
• Hercab (Gianluigi Trovesi, arrangement Corrado Guarino)
• Choro Dançado (Maria Schneider)
• Combo
• Moving Parts (Ethan Fenn, world premiere)
• Improvisation Workshop
• Xiao-Li Meng (Alan Lenarcic, world premiere)
• Chant Bien Fatal (Maurice Merle)
• Strange Days Follow Victories (Michael Heller, world premiere)
• Big Band
• Exaltation / Religious Experience / Major (Carl Ruggles / Carla Bley)
• It's Oh So Quiet (Lang & Reisfeld)
• Dedalo (Gianluigi Trovesi, arrangement Corrado Guarino)

Bleu 3 - Premiere - Inside the score

Bleu 3, my recent composition for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, will be premiered on Saturday, Feb. 9th. The concert takes place in Paine Hall, Harvard University Music Department, at 8 p.m. The great performers will be:

• Rane Moore, clarinet
• Gabby Diaz, violin
• Benjamin Schwartz, cello
• Yoko Hagino, piano
• Eric Hewitt, conductor

New music

This concert is organized by the Harvard Group for New Music. The program includes also new music by composers:

• Ashley Fure
• Ulrich Kreppein
• Matthew Mendez
• Dominique Schafer
• Bert Van Herck
• Tolga Yayalar

Look inside the score!

Have a look inside the score of Bleu 3. It will be available for purchase very soon.
The instrumentation is the same as Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du Temps (Quartet for the End of Time), and you will find allusions to this piece in the score. If you can come to the concert, make sure we talk together during the after-concert reception!