Jean-Francois Charles

Tonight at 5:30pm, Ramin Roshandel and I, i.e. the Jamshid Jam duet, are playing new music to an excerpt of Lotte Reiniger 's wonderful movie The Adventures of Prince Achmed , at the invitation of film and media historian Michael Cowan and the organisers. Come if you are available! If not, stay tuned: we are working on more music for this film! To be continued...

This year, we are fortunate that Gabriel Kahane is visiting the University of Iowa several times and meeting with the composers. Given his experience with orchestral writing and arranging songs, we are excited that he is going to coach students on arrangements of songs for singer (optionally playing guitar or piano) and string quartet. Gabriel Kahane shares some of his ideas on arranging on this post, including some song examples . Favorite arrangements featuring strings Among my favorite song arrangments, I want to first highlight the work of Stefan Malzew for Ute Lempper . Their collaboration on the 2012 album Paris Days, Berlin Nights is masterful. In Stefan Malzew's string writing, we can hear his love not only for the songs but also for the string quartet and its history. Here are two excerpts: First, two Kurt Weill songs: Surabaya Johnny , from Happy End and Die Moritat von Mackie Messer , from Die Dreigroschenoper (i.e. Mack the Knife , from The Threepenny Opera )...

This is the video of the premiere of the piece Montagne Pelée , for solo baritone saxophone , with optional Rubens tube . Montagne Pelée was inspired by saxophonist Kenneth Tse ’s interaction with the flames of a Rubens tube built by Dale Stille at the University of Iowa. It is also an echo of the 1902 catastrophic eruption of Mount Pelée in the Island of Martinique. The different parts of the piece trace a story from early fumaroles and eruptions to the pyroclastic surge to the remaining ashes and light. I composed the multiphonic sounds on a Yamaha baritone saxophone, model YBS-62ii. In the score, the pitch notation of the multiphonic sounds is approximative; in most cases, only two pitches are written even if more may be heard. The performer may adapt the fingerings if necessary. The piece was premiered on October 6, 2025 at the University of Iowa, featuring an introduction by Professor of Physics Frederick Skiff. Interesting: the Rubens tube was invented in 1905, 60 years a...

The Tortured Poets Department Taylor Swift Missa brevis Abbaye de Thélème Anika Kildegaard Composed & produced by Jack Antonoff, Aaron Dessner, and Taylor Swift Composed & produced by Jean-François Charles Fortnight, written by Taylor Swift , Jack Antonoff , and Austin Post The Tortured Poets Department, written by Taylor Swift & Jack Antonoff My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys, written by Taylor Swift Down Bad, written by Taylor Swift & Jack Antonoff So Long, London, written by Taylor Swift & Aaron Dessner But Daddy, I Love Him, written by Taylor Swift & Aaron Dessner Fresh Out The Slammer, written by Taylor Swift & Jack Antonoff Florida!!!, written by Taylor Swift & Florence Welch Guilty as Sin?, written by Taylor Swift & Jack Antonoff Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?, written by Taylor Swift ...

David Christoffel is a composer, an author, and a radio producer. I was thrilled to be invited on his classical music program Metaclassique . We met in July in Paris. The program is now available (in French): Metaclassique #349 - Allier - electronic & acoustic music . We discussed the music from Jamshid Jam (duet with Ramin Roshandel) and my Electroclarinet series. On the program Collaborations between electronic and acoustic music are laboratories for musical forms that are invented through timbre alloys. A three-part journey with Patrick-Astrid Defossez , Jean-François Charles , and co-composers Olivier Delevingne and Benoît Menut .

Monday, October 6, 7:30pm, Voxman Building, Opera Studio My colleague professor Matthew Arndt emcees the first of seven presentations of an intergalactic music poetics. As he says: " Drawing together ancient wisdom and modern science, this poetics aims at transmuting one’s experience of everything as music and living joyfully even as we work confidently toward an abundant future. " I am thrilled that Matthew Arndt invited me to curate the second part of the evening with compositions of mine. I am also thrilled that brilliant minds and artists from Iowa City are joining me on stage! Program Matthew Arndt presents the première of a video episode produced by Rabalais Productions with artisan animation by Auden Lincoln-Vogel. Legit , for trombone & live electronics, with Jonathan Allen Jamshid Jam & guest, for setar & live electronics with guest spoken word artist, with Ramin Roshandel and Jhe Russell Première of Montagne Pelée , for solo baritone saxop...

The Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik is a prestigious non-profit organization dedicated to awarding prizes to the best new releases in recorded music. I am thrilled to see that our album Tenebrae was nominated for the Quarterly Critic's Choice in the category Electronic & Experimental Music . Check the complete list of nominees in all 32 categories .

I'm very thankful to David Gompper and the musicians who performed on April 20, 2025 my composition Nigritella nigra : Sayyod Mirzomurodov, clarinet Yestyn Griffith violin I Michael Klyce, violin II Kylie Little, viola Hanna Rumora, violoncello

Music Hackspace is an online hub to learn hands-on how to work with art & technology. On Saturday, I was invited to give a workshop on the topic Max 9 - Get a better sound in Max using ABL objects . It was a great pleasure to meet musicians and share with them some of my experience with Max. If you are interested, there is a workshop on February 8 on a very close topic: Max 9: Adaptive audio fx systems with ABL and preset mixing . Although the technical concepts in Jordan Tyler Munson's and my workshop are almost the same, I'm sure we are presenting them in a different way. With Max, there's always another way of getting to the same goal, or a different way of using the same objects!

This week-end, I am playing with LIGAMENT a house show in Minneapolis and a concert at Constellation in Chicago ( tickets ). Anika Kildegaard: voice Will Yager: double bass Jean-François Charles: bass & contrabass clarinets, electronics Program Chansons Imprévues - Marc Monnet II. Décapeur IV. Mon mour teur meur An Alphabet for Grant Wood (Nattie's Air, excerpt from the opera Grant Wood in Paris ) - Jean-François Charles Changing Light - Kaija Saariaho not of longing - Paul Novak Petrified - Jean-François Charles ( Minneapolis only ) Benedictus (excerpt from the Missa brevis Abbaye de Thélème ) - Jean-François Charles ( Minneapolis only ) Anacoluthe - Pascal Dusapin Flannau Duo The Chicago concert will start with a set by the Flannau Duo : Jonathan Hannau and Kyle Flens with their program Oops! All Toy Piano : Nobility of Homophones II - Olivia Kieffer Outdifference - Ben Zucker Music for Amplified Toy Pianos - John Cage Cla...

Over the years, I've been blessed to make music with incredible artists. Today, I am thrilled to annouce the release of the Tenebrae album , created in collaboration with eleven unique musicians and poets. Tenebrae by Jean-François Charles The album is a 21st century reverberation of Carlo Gesualdo's Tenebrae responsories . Like the ship on the album’s cover, the music is suspended between the physical and the spiritual world. Two poetic bonus tracks, La bête and The sea , invite to meditate further on the place of life on planet Earth. First nocturne On the Mount of Olives , with Ramin Roshandel, setar Ramin Roshandel and I created the Jamshid Jam duet in December 2019. We released Jamshid Jam as an album and performed it across the United States. Together, we have also played soccer, enjoyed Persian food, and listened to a lot of music while traveling. Sorrowful is my soul , with Nicolas Sidoroff, trumpet & objects As students, ">Nicolas Sidoroff an...

Here is for great holiday music: Baby Bossa Nova, written by Mike Simpson for Dick Schory and the Percussion Pops Orchestra in 1963. Percussionist Dan Moore invited me to play clarinets on his album The Long Way Home . I play the small Eb clarinet, the Bb, the basset-horn, and the contra-alto clarinet. He wrote the arrangement and performed all of the percussion parts. He also shot and edited the video! Check out the album , it features great tunes and great musicians. Happy Holidays!

Here is a video that I shared in 2021 with composer Davide Ianni while he was composing Dedalo Nero, a solo for contralto clarinet . The instrument is a Leblanc paperclip contra-alto clarinet in Eb, known as model 350. The instrument I have used might have been made in 1967. Davide was looking for pale multiphonic sounds. All of these sounds are preferably played pianississimo to piano. Some can be played forte. The basic technique to look for multiphonic sounds on a clarinet consists in playing different partials/pitches on a given fingering - using throat shape and air pressure variations. Then try to play these different partials at the same time. I learnt all of these techniques from working with clarinetist Armand Angster .

You might remember the premiere performance of composer Davide Ianni's Dedalo Nero, for contralto clarinet . With Davide Ianni, we had the great pleasure of sharing behind-the-scenes details about the piece during the International Clarinet Association New Music Weekend 2024 . You will find below the video of this masterclass:

I loved meeting with Mike Viola, a passionate musician . We had an enlightening conversation with great questions from the audience. I think that a fan made a video of the interview, but I'm not sure it's available online. Don't hesitate to link it if you stumble upon it!

I met Steven Schick when I attended the Centre Acanthes in 2000 . Among other pieces, he had performed Bone Alphabet , which Brian Ferneyhough had written for him. Steven Schick was a guest at the University of Iowa in October : he was born in Iowa and got a Bachelor and a Masters at the University. It was a treat to hear him perform Bone Alphabet again, but I also enjoyed a lot hearing two performances of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Zyklus , a wonderfully playful piece. Steven Schick also conducted a beautiful rendering of Varèse's Ionisation , a sensitive piece of percussion chamber music. I had the pleasure of performing with the Center for New Music conducted by David Gompper . The most important piece on the concert was George Lewis 's Soundlines , a piece during which Steven Schick tells the story of a walk he took from San Diego to San Francisco. During the summer, I re-built the live electronics set-up designed by George Lewis; I took care of the live sound perfor...

If you live neat Iowa City, consider attending the International Screendance Festival at FilmScene on September 28 at 6pm. Our Agnus Dei music video, a musical setting of François Villon's Ballade des pendus, has been chosen in the Official Selection! Tickets are available at FilmScene . P.S.: the video is also online: Agnus Dei, musical setting of François Villon's Ballade des Pendus .

Following-up on a great 2022 concert , Timothy Gill and David Gompper recently released the album Exchanges on Albany Records. They included my composition Petrified, for cello & live electronics (link to score & Max patches) . I love how the amazing Timothy Gill made the interpretation his own. He really contributed his original creativity in the three improvised cadenzas. This work fits in the long tradition of compositions for cello and electronics. A classic one is Kaija Saariaho 's Petals for Solo Cello and Electronics (1988). Listen here to a recording by cellist Madeleine Shapiro on Albany Records. Brian Ferneyhough composed Time and Motion Study II for cello and live electronics (1973-76). The piece uses tape delays and ring modulation, very much in the tradition. Here is a recording showing the score . Dai Fujikura 's The Spirit of Beings is composed for cello and fixed electronics (backing track). Here is a live recording . Composer Kar...

Like most genres of music, Reggae is a hybrid. I was lucky this year to add to my collection the 3-CD edition of Bob Marley and the Wailers's Catch a Fire - an album to listen to! Then, reggae has been hybridized with other genres, for instance from pop or hip-hop cultures. Here are a few tracks from 2001 to 2016 that I find interesting, enjoyable, and very well crafted! Jay-Z : Hola' Hovito , in The Blueprint , 2001 Produced by Timbaland Britney Spears : Showdown , in In The Zone , 2003 Produced by Bloodshy & Avant Lady Gaga : Dancin' In Circles , in Joanne , 2009 Produced by Jeff Coplan, Robert Ellis Orrall Rihanna : Man Down, in Loud , 2010 Produced by Sham, Kuk Harrell, Bobby Campbell Madonna : Unapologetic Bitch , in Rebel Heart , 2014 Produced by Madonna, Shelco Garcia & Teenwolf, BV, Diplo, Ariel Rechtshaid Beyoncé : Hold Up, in Lemonade , 2016 Produced by Diplo, Beyoncé, Ezra Koenig

When we performed at the Stanley Museum of Art, there was quite a bit of ambient noise. This pushed us to create music like we had never made together yet. Especially, the second part of the concert ended with an incredible constellation of sonic stars . Here is the video: You could already listen to the first part of the concert .