Jean-Francois Charles

I'm thrilled to announce the première tonight of Benedictus , the seventh part of my Arc-en-ciel cycle . I'm even more thrilled because the performance features two unique artists, with whom I profoundly enjoyed working: Isabelle Jost, a great singer and professor. I already worked with her in 2005 for the première of Zygomatic Jean-Marc Larché, the excellent saxophonist who plays notably in the Tarkovsky Quartet (they recorded on ECM: Tarkovsky Quartet's recordings ) Sacred music In the Arc-en-ciel cycle, Benedictus is associated with the color purple, and with the theme of spiritual life. Religion, life & death collide when the latin text meets Baudelaire's poem L'examen de Minuit , from Les Fleurs du Mal . The composition has also been inspired by the French artist Mylène Farmer . Tonight's concert Concert is taking place in Montbéliard, in the Palot concert hall, at 8:30 p.m. The program features many compositions for acoustic instruments and liv

Last summer, I presented you with the first sketch for a new composition called Benedictus . A few weeks later, the sketch had received a number of updates. You can see additional layers on the most recent version: Well, this composition turns out to be a kind of pop song. The singer is accompanied by an electronic music track which production I just finished, and by a live soprano saxophone. Benedictus will be premiered very soon: stay tuned to get all the details!

I just uploaded a recording of Risorius , a composition for six singers premièred a year ago by the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart . Listen or download below: On a post about the related composition Zygomatic , I mentioned other examples of musical laughters. Thanks to the Library of Congress, I must now add to this list a 1906 recording of different laughters , including one during the final musical piece...

Voilà! Photograph by Martha Stewart from the GSAS web site images of commencement 2011 It was a great pleasure to meet many friends in Cambridge last week. Thank you all for your friendship. Thanks for your support during my years as a Ph.D. student! Bénédicte photographed the early procession This Commencement was also a musical event. Tenor Plácido Domingo was made Doctor of Music. Then, hearing that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was an opera aficionado, he improvised a little song for her (see embedded video below):