Jean-Francois Charles

We just had a great run of rehearsals last week with percussionist Maxime Échardour . Maxime really enjoyed the sound of the bells built from recycled materials by musician & maker Van Hien Bui: Van-Hien also built a cimbalom that Maxime is going to play: The list of instruments featured for the première will look like: vibraphone with motor (3 octaves is enough) 3 toms tam 4 DIY bells, tuned to C#, D, G, F# (left to right for the performer) a F# Thai gong a F# ancient cymbal - crotale a DIY cimbalom and a DIY mono string instrument hidden behind the cimbalom on the pic below, an electronic Farfisa F326 keyboard! no bongos: we ended-up not using the ones on the pic below . For the Chanson section, 4th part of the score , I wrote out a possible realization just for Maxime to play mainly on the vibraphone:

I am sad to report that Sculptor and composer Oscar Wiggli passed away on January 26th, 2016. He was 88 years old. I had the great pleasure to meet with this unique Swiss artist and his wife Janine in 2013. We visited them with Master students who were working on a digital re-creation of the Syhamo, a hybrid synthesizer with digital processing & analog sound synthesis, one of the first interactive pieces of art with live sensor-controlled sound synthesis. Oscar Wiggli in his workshop. There in Muriaux, we discovered the amazing sculptures kept by the Fondation Oscar et Janine Wiggli . We also met director Claude Stadelmann, who was shooting a documentary on Oscar. This film was shown on the Swiss public channel 2 weeks ago, and is still streaming for 15 days on the RTS-2 web site - you have to stream it from Switzerland: Oscar Wiggli, sculpteur et compositeur. It is a wonderful document, with beautiful footage of Oscar Wiggli working at the Von Roll furnaces. Here is an excer...