Jean-Francois Charles

I am honored to have been awarded a commission and residency at the 2019 Sampo Composition Competition , organized by musinfo . Following this award, I have composed a new piece Masse pétrie for cello and the live electronics system Sampo , which will be performed by cellist Marie Ythier . She has worked with many composers, and has recorded new works for cello and live electronics in her album Le Geste Augmenté . I'm looking forward to working with her, and to meeting the festival guest composers . What is the Sampo? The Sampo is a live electronics set-up that implements a simplified version of one algorithm available on the Lexicon sound processor LXP-15. Although the Sampo hardware is quite advanced and expensive (it includes a computer and a sound card), the software's capabilities are more limited than these offered by the original LXP-15 sound processor. Sampo implements a simplified version of the Pitch-Delay algorithm, from the Lexicon LXP-15 sound processor. C...

Petrified is a composition for double bass and live electronics. Bassist Will Yager premiered the piece during our Spring 2019 Laptop Orchestra concert . In this first version, I performed the live electronic processing live. Will asked me to prepare a standalone version that he could take on the road. Here is a screenshot of the live audio processing interface: In this work, the electronics consist of two layers: live spectral processing of the double bass, including pitch shifting, frequency shifting, noise shaping, etc. multi-playhead sampler, applied to sound sampled at different points during the piece. These sonic layers are also mixed with the direct sound of the instrument, and sent to a delay and two reverb lines. Tonight, Will is performing Petrified with the standalone live electronics, during the Electronic Music Studio concert, Stark Studio, Voxman Building, 7:30. Update: the score and Max patch for Petrified, version for double bass & live electronics , a...

This semester, I've been coaching bassist Will Yager and soprano Anika Kildegaard on their chamber music project LIGAMENT . They have been building a great repertoire of pieces for double bass and soprano. Then, we had the idea of working on Pascal Dusapin 's composition Anacoluthe , for soprano, double bass, and contrabass clarinet. Last week, during Ensemble Accroche Note 's residency at the School of Music, we worked with clarinetist Armand Angster and soprano Françoise Kubler - she took the pictures. We are performing Anacoluthe tonight, at the School of Music, University of Iowa , at 7:30 in the Recital Hall. You are invited! By the way, do you know what an anacoluthe is?