Jean-Francois Charles

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...

Flashback on a collaboration between Dan Miller, Dan Moore, Matt Mason, and Jean-François Charles, part of the Sounds of Water project. A concert organized by Jean-François Charles ( School of Music , Center for New Music ) and Marian Muste (IIHR – Hydroscience & Engineering), with support from the Office of the Vice-President for Research at the University of Iowa. Part of the Young Professional Workshop Lowering Flood Risk by Increasing Resilience. Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 5:30pm Voxman Music Building Stark Opera Studio Dan Miller : creation of the Malignancy installation Dan Moore : percussion Matt Mason: piano Jean-François Charles: bass clarinet Clouds in Icy Moonlight was composed by Helmut Lachenmann . During the same concert, you could also enjoy Water Music , by Dan Moore, performed with students Gabe Albertus & Wil Voelker:

You are invited: this Sunday, the Center for New Music performs a concert with music by guest composer Davide Ianni . I will be performing Dedalo Nero , a brand new piece that Davide Ianni wrote for solo contralto clarinet. I'm also taking part on bass clarinet in Orme d'Ombre , for two wind quintets, double bass, piano, and percussion. Music director David Gompper paired these two works with Chanted Rituals , for trumpet/flugelhorn and 2 percussions by Vivian Fung and the ensemble piece Pour l'Image by Philippe Hurel . The concert is taking place on Sunday, Feb 13, at 7:30pm CST in the Voxman Concert Hall. Details and streaming link are available here .

The Electroclarinet album in out! Available on most streaming and download platforms: Spotify , Apple Music / iTunes , Amazon , Deezer, Tidal , etc. Thank you for listening!

Getting ready early January before the recording of pieces for clarinet & live electronics.

I'm delighted to play bass clarinet on Sunday with the Ensemble Sable & Ciel. After Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Two piano sonata by Marine Lombard & Claire Prévôt, Joël Doussard will be conducting: The Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss, starring guest soprano Helen Kearns Maurice Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin The concert is taking place on Sunday, April 24th, at 5 p.m., in the beautiful concert hall at the Brest conservatory.

On Sunday, I'm playing the bass clarinet in the Ensemble Sable & Ciel. We are performing Giacinto Scelsi 's Kya, featuring soloist Christophe Dravers on clarinet. It's great music, with subtle relations between tuned and detuned intervals. Christophe Dravers plays beautifully, while Marc Schuster conducts with precision & poetry. Mozart and Rota are also on the program:

I'm playing the bass clarinet tomorrow in Lorient, for a concert dedicated to Gershwin, Kurt Weill and Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto . Orchestra conductor Laurent Goossaert is great: he is pushing the orchestra to its very best. Rhapsody in Blue should sound really good - of course, I still have a special feeling for the 1932 version we performed with Ryan Bañagale & the Dudley Jazz Band. To learn more on Gershwin and the Rhapsody as a composition and an evolving arrangement, make sure you read Ryan Bañagale's book Arranging Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue and the Creation of an American Icon .

On Sunday, March 1st, I'm playing the bass clarinet in the Ensemble Sable & Ciel, for the Ravel's Concerto pour la main gauche . I would like to invite you, but the concert is sold out. Conductor Joël Doussard designed a concert of French Music, with Fauré's Pelléas et Mélisande orchestral suite, and both the Concerto en sol and the Concerto pour la main gauche by Maurice Ravel . Pianist François Dumont will perform both piano concertos! Bass clarinet in A Ravel is calling for a bass clarinet in Bb and a bass clarinet in A. Given the cost/benefit ratio of the instruments, the bass clarinet in A has almost entirely disappeared. I am convinced that the timbre difference between an A and a Bb bass clarinet is less than the difference you have between bass clarinets from two manufacturers, or between two clarinetists playing the same instrument, or between 2 mouthpiece/reed combinations played by the same performer. But the bass clarinet in A did exist. For more i...

Looking for the studio album? Visit www.electroclarinet.com After the recording , here are a couple of pictures, from the early sketches to the score: Part I , first sketch & score: Part II , from my pocket notebook: Part III , sketch & score excerpt:

Looking for the studio album? Visit www.electroclarinet.com After the première of Electroclarinet 6 in November , I just posted a recording online. The composition is articulated in three parts: Part I: 0:00 to 6:15 Part II: 6:15 to 9:25 Part III: 9:25 to 14:06

Monday, last week in Helsinki, in the green room before the première of Electroclarinet 6: the clarinet fixing kit was precious when it came to fine-tuning this old Buffet bass clarinet! I had a wonderful time in Finland, where I met with great musicians and artists. Expect more about this musical trip in upcoming posts. In the meantime, I am performing Electroclarinet 6, for bass clarinet & live electronics , on Friday, November 28th, in Brest. Hope to see you there!

Looking for the studio album? Visit www.electroclarinet.com On Monday, November 17th, I'll be performing in Helsinki, in the beautiful "Black Box" space at the Sibelius Academy, during the MuteFest'14 electronic music festival . Information is also available here, in Finnish . I'm looking forward to meeting the academy's dynamic artistic community, as well as cellist Émilie Girard-Charest, who is performing on Monday, too . Program notes I'm going to première Electroclarinet 6 , for bass clarinet & live electronics, and perform Electroclarinet 5 , as well. Tentative program notes: Electroclarinet 5 is a composition for clarinet & live electronics, and an homage to Igor Stravinsky . The score is built around four motives directly inspired by Stravinsky's Three Pieces for Clarinet solo and Piano-Rag-Music . The performer plays around the score, following paths of her/his choice, or adventuring out of the suggested paths. The live electroni...

Tomorrow, the Stump-Linshalm duo open their course for contemporary clarinet- and bass clarinet music in Mürzzuschlag (Austria) . Petra Stump and Heinz-Peter Linshalm are awesome clarinetists & musicians dedicated to new music. We met when we took part to summer Stockhausen courses. I was later delighted to contribute to their project ShortCuts . Check out the International Bass Clarinet Research Center 's home page: this month, their album is the featured recording! Never-ending musical transformations Listen to Petra & Heinz-Peter performing composer Ming Wang's piece Verwandlung ("transformation" or "metamorphosis") during the Tage der Neuen Musik Burghausen in July: Brand new music!

Last Sunday, I had the great pleasure to play the bass clarinet in Mahler's Lieder einer fahrenden Gesellen , with the Ensemble Entre Sable et Ciel orchestra in Brest, next to clarinetists Christophe Dravers and Michel Dissegna. Wonderful guests performed with the orchestra: singer Marc Scoffoni and pianist Yun-Yang Lee , who connected deeply with the audience. Next concert, on Sunday April 13th, features Brahms's Trio for clarinet, cello and piano, and Sibelius's 5th symphony.

As I said when announcing the premiere concert , the piece Bagict (15-16/60) is dedicated to both Ryan Banagale and Michael Cuthbert . Thank you for taking part in the 60/60 project ! Ryan chose the Illustrated History of Magic book , while Michael picked Milton Babbitt's Phonemena CD . Because both presents came at the same time, and Ryan and Michael are almost colleagues, I decided to compose a piece inspired by both objects. The Illustrated History of Magic suggested me to base the composition on the idea of transformation . In the piece, the transformation of a musical material into another is realized/improvised/decided live by the performers. From Milton Babbitt , I stole the series of twelve pivot notes used in the melody and harmony of Phonemena 's first couple of bars. I recorded the premiere performance on a minidisc (in Bien, Switzerland, on August 15th, 2008). The excellent performers were Yuji Noguchi, clarinets , and Vincent Daoud, saxophones . Here are the li...

Yesterday, I went to Strasburg and had a coffee with Armand Angster, my former clarinet teacher. He is an expert at many clarinets, including bass and contrabass. The first instrument I learnt with him, after Bb clarinet, was the basset-horn, to play a Pascal Dusapin work during Festival Musica in 2000. Last year, I put together a recital program both artistically engaging and pedagogically interesting. I played it twice:   - Bayridge Residence and Cultural Center, Boston, February 24th, 2007   - Harvard University Hall, Cambridge, March 1st, 2007 Program Suite / Ed , Armand Angster - bass clarinet Petite Fleur , Sydney Bechet (1897-1959) - Bb clarinet Sieben Lieder der Tage , Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007) - basset-horn Episodes , Gunther Schuller (1925-) - Bb clarinet Clarinet Quintet - Larghetto , Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) - A clarinet Lina , Jean-François Charles - contrabass clarinet God bless the child , Billie Holiday (1915-1959)...