Jean-Francois Charles

I am delighted to dedicate the 4 new minutes of the 60/60 project to a generous participant, and close relation of mine, Brigitte Urien . Saturation is a musical setting of Ruth Lepson 's poem Saturation (yes, it's the same title,) featuring the poet herself as the main speaker. Remember, I met Ruth last summer, and we had fun performing and improvising together . Saturation , the poem, was published in the review Carve - poems in August 2006.     Saturation in Music and Poetry Among the four great presents that I received for this piece, the one that surprised me the most is The New Media Reader . It is a fascinating book, that puts into perspective the Internet with the Oulipo movement, Eliza , and other essential projects of the 20th century. It gave me the idea of using Speech Synthesis to read a few sentences of the poem. This book addresses the concept of Saturation , not in water like the poem, but in information and communication. Speech Synthesis sounds li

My first composition for cell phone! Click play to listen, and click on "1/60 - Cell 1" to go to last.fm and download the file. If your cell phone accepts mp3 ringtones, you should manage to use this one easily (check your manual...) Jean-François Charles – 1/60 - Cell 1 Maybe you recognize these bells: I just extracted them from 1/60 - Aria . You can listen again to the Aria: Jean-François Charles – 1/60 - Aria Each bell has its own sound In the Alps, each bell is different. There is a chance component in the process of fabrication that makes each sound unique. The sound depends also on the beater you use. In this recording, to stay within the theme of 1/60 (human / machine, natural / artificial), I produced artificial bell sounds, and I tried to give each bell a slightly different character. I used a physical modeling audio software, that enabled me to modify the "material" of the bells, and other parameters, such as how the beater bounces on the

In March 2007, I was invited by Andrew Bentley and Sibelius Academy to give a week of lectures and workshops in Helsinki. The topic was live electronics - spectral sound processing with Max/MSP and Jitter . Andrew Bentley is not only a real connoisseur of the developments of electronic music (he was an early actor of the Composers Desktop Project ), but also a singular artist: I hope I will be able to let you know more about his art in the future. I really enjoyed teaching there, and the conditions were ideal: there was a team of 10 students, active and interested. each student worked on a computer with the proper software installed (Max/MSP/Jitter, from Cycling 74 .) we met every morning during 3 hours, over 5 days. Every morning, we had time for some new concepts, as well as hands-on patching, or collective thinking about design and other topics. Gig at the Feeniks Club Every Thursday night, the Academy's café is turned into a music club. Would that be great if every

Do you remember the 60/60 composition project ? I am thrilled to dedicate the first minute to Katherine Lee , who chose in the original list the CD Bach: The Goldberg Variations 1955 Performance: Zenph Re-performance . Here is my composition, titled Aria . Click play to listen:   Music, humans, and machines In the CD that Katherine offered me, the version of the Goldberg Variations raises many questions. The piano plays by itself: it is a Yamaha Disklavier Pro . The Zenph team prepared a high resolution MIDI version of Glenn Gould's famous 1955 interpretation , and recorded the electronically driven piano. They even produced a concert during which the piano played by itself Glenn Gould's interpretation. But the best is here: what do you think about this quote from the booklet ? "In effect, a long-dead pianist can now give live performances or make recordings of interpretations that are still recognizably his ." Speaking about humans and machines making mus

Plex - alto saxophone version On May 6th, 2004, with numerous friends of Arfi's ( Association à la Recherche d'un Folklore Imaginaire ) and Maurice Merle's, we met together at in Lyon, France, in Théâtre des Jeunes Années for the night "Le Souffle Continue." Philippe Gilbert (sax) and myself (live electronics) played Plex , and I dedicated this version with alto sax to Maurice Merle. Here is the recording: Short biography Maurice Merle was born on April 27th, 1945 in Le Puy, France. He graduated from a business school, and became a saxophonist, composer, and arranger. He creates in 1968 the Free Jazz Workshop with Jean Mereu , Jean Bolcato, and Pierre Guyon. With Christian Rollet , he is at the origin of La Carrérarie , a company of Musical Theater for Children. Since 1972, he has created numerous shows, from l'Opéra Jubjub to Prismo , along with Steve Waring and Alain Gibert . In 1977, he is among the founders of Arfi, and has played in the most