Jean-Francois Charles

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!

Kino-Pravda is a series of newsreels directed by Dziga Vertov between 1922 and 1925. This summer, during a residency at the Logelloù with Nicolas Sidoroff and Krystian Sarrau , we created a new soundtrack to Vertov's Kino-Pravda No. 5 and No. 6 : We recorded the soundtrack live on July 30, 2021. The Council of Three Dziga Vertov worked very closely with Mikhail Kaufman and Elizaveta Svilova . They constituted a Council of Three and published about Kino-Eye and their vision of film making. In these excerpts from a 1923 resolution, the Council of Three describe how the camera enables to see the world in new ways: I am kino-eye, I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, show you the world as only I can see it. Now and forever, I free myself from humanity immobility, I am in constant motion, I draw near, then away from objects, I crawl under, I climb onto them. I move apace with the muzzler of a galloping horse, I plunge full speed into a crowd, I outstrip running soldiers, I...

The Eleventh Year evening initially programmed on March 20, 2020 , was postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemy. We had the great pleasure to transform the initially planned 3-day event into a week-long residency at the Logelloù Artistic Center. With Nicolas Sidoroff (trumpet, objects) and Krystian Sarrau (tenor sax, modular synthesizer), we worked and composed together a new soundtrack to two newsreels by Dziga Vertov : Kino-Pravda No 5 and No 6. Krystian Sarrau, with Vertov's Kino-Pravda No 19 on the screen, picture by Philippe Ollivier The Kino-Pravda series consists in a set of 23 newsreels authored by Dziga Vertov between 1922 and 1925. Jean-François Charles on basset-horn & live electronics during the same rehearsal, picture by Philippe Ollivier The week ended with a full evening of music dedicated to supporting Dziga Vertov's pictures: Dziga Vertov: Concert & Cinema . Program: Prelude (live music) Kino-Pravda No 5 & No 6 (movie with new soundtrac...

The Whole Note is a wonderful music magazine serving Toronto and Southern Ontario. I am very proud that they chose to review the new album Electroclarinet : Three tracks are also available during the month of February in their Listening Room . Thanks for listening!

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

After the September improv session Saint-Malo street , you are invited: tomorrow, jam at the Au Coin d’la Rue solidarity space in Recouvrance, Brest, France. More info on Au coin d'la Rue's web site . Friends will be playing sax, electric harp, voice, and unexpected sound objects; I might play contrabass clarinet & basset horn, we shall see. Hope to see you there - with your instrument / dancers, actors & other artists welcome too!

Looking for the studio album? Visit www.electroclarinet.com During my guest talk on Music & digital art , I premièred Electroclarinet 3 , a new composition for basset horn & live sound processing. The piece is an homage to Carl Maria von Weber , who composed lots of great music for clarinet. The theme, which manuscript you can see above, was inspired by the theme from Weber's Opus 33 (7 variations for clarinet & piano). At a larger scale, the form draws on Weber's composition as well: Theme Four parts corresponding to the Variation III (Adagio) of the Opus 33 Coda referencing the Opus 33's final seven measures I couldn't resist including a "WEBER" series of notes: W  Mi / E E   Mi bémol / Eb B   Si bémol / Bb E   Mi bémol / Eb R   Ré / D In the coda, these notes are transposed for the basset-horn:

This Thursday, February 17th, I'm talking in the Cafés numériques ( digital cafés ) series. My talk is entitled Le son et l'art numérique (sound & digital art - link to more information on the series) I'm focusing on two topics: What does it mean to talk about digital sound and analog sound? what sound is short history of audio recording technology LP record versus CD why artists today (like Jay-Z & Kanye West) are still recording & mixing with analog gear in studios such as Peter Gabriel's great place advantages of digital technology... including the fact that almost anybody can play with sounds today! Inside a LP record groove: picture by Chris Supranowitz Do we compose differently with digital technology? Well, I'm answering the question in a very applied way: as part of the talk, I'm performing the première of Electroclarinet 3 , a new composition for basset-horn & live electronics.

In March, I announced the creation concert "Acquainted with the night" , during which we premièred five new musical compositions on Robert Frost's poem . I just posted the live recording. It features singer Michael Barrett (I was playing the basset-horn and live electronics).

Composer, conductor, pianist, and music educator Bert Van Herck is a colleague of mine at Harvard Dudley House , where he is the musical director of the classical orchestra. He conceived the "Acquainted with the night" project: Acquainted with the Night Thursday, March 4th, 2010, 8 pm Dudley House Common Room Free admission In an experiment of collaboration and improvisation, each of the Dudley Music Fellows composed a song on the same text by Robert Frost . Five world premières in one concert! You will hear Robert Frost's poem Acquainted with the Night , in new musical versions by: Behtash & Mehrtash Babadi ( saroud, tanbour & recitation ) Jean-François Charles ( voice, basset-horn & live electronics ) Bert Van Herck ( voice, piano & basset-horn ) Gabriele Vanoni ( voice & piano ) Jan Kennard ( voice & piano ) Musicians: Michael Barrett, voice Anney Gillotte, voice Maryam Vaziri, voice Miriam Conti, piano Mehrtash Babadi, tanbour Behtash B...

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)...

In fall 2002, still at Strasbourg Conservatory , I registered at the École nationale de musique du pays de Montbéliard (Montbéliard national music school). Ensemble New Flore had just invested in a new Apple Laptop (a Powerbook G4, 800 MHz, 756 Mo, at the time), and I wanted to learn interactive music with Max/MSP . I chose Montbéliard because of the composition faculty, Hans Tutschku and Jacopo Baboni Schilingi . Each other week, we met there during 2 intense days, with many great students. We were a creative and motivated community of young artists, including, for instance, Lorenzo "Lorbi" Bianchi and Daniele Segre Amar (now members of esc-crew ). Nice music school in Montbéliard , isn't it? My first composition with live electronics Plex is a composition for solo instrument and live electronics . The live electronics may be played either by the soloist, or by a second performer. I performed the premiere on clarinet and live electronics in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switz...