Jean-Francois Charles

I took the picture on the left during the dress rehearsal for the premiere of Bleu 3 . The mug is used to play glissandi in the piano part, as you can see on this excerpt: Bleu 3 is a quartet for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, linked in several ways to Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time . In June 2008, it was awarded the George Arthur Knight Prize by the Harvard Music Department . Students who recently received the prize include: Ashley Fure : Susurrus , 2007 Lei Liang : Serashi Fragments , 2006 José-Luis Hurtado : De relieve doble , 2005 Dominique Schafer : Fluchtpunkte , 2004 José Luis Hurtado: Of Green and Gray , 2003 Christopher Honett: Three Deaths in a Cambridge Museum , 2002 Christopher Trapani : History by Moonlight , 2002 Erik Spangler : Gut Matrix , 2001 Helen Lee: Strands , 2000 Lansing McLoskey : Tinted , 1999 Christoph Neidhofer : Nach Innen , 1998 Purchase the score of Bleu 3 on amazon.com . Listen to Bleu 3 on last.fm .

After the premiere and the publication of the score , here is the recording of Bleu 3 : You can also listen to it or download it on last.fm . This is the live recording of the premiere, admirably performed by: Rane Moore, clarinet Gabby Diaz, violin Benjamin Schwartz, cello Yoko Hagino, piano Eric Hewitt , conductor Of course, I was wearing a blue shirt: Look inside the score New! Have a look inside the score with both amazon and google books .

Bleu 3 , my recent composition for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, will be premiered on Saturday, Feb. 9th. The concert takes place in Paine Hall, Harvard University Music Department , at 8 p.m. The great performers will be: Rane Moore, clarinet Gabby Diaz, violin Benjamin Schwartz, cello Yoko Hagino, piano Eric Hewitt, conductor New music This concert is organized by the Harvard Group for New Music . The program includes also new music by composers: Ashley Fure Ulrich Kreppein Matthew Mendez Dominique Schafer Bert Van Herck Tolga Yayalar Look inside the score! Have a look inside the score of Bleu 3 . It will be available for purchase very soon . The instrumentation is the same as Olivier Messiaen 's Quatuor pour la fin du Temps (Quartet for the End of Time) , and you will find allusions to this piece in the score. If you can come to the concert, make sure we talk together during the after-concert reception!

Tonight, Saturday December 15th, I will diffuse Bleu 2 on the 30 speakers of the Hydra Loudspeaker Orchestra . The mixing consoles driving the Hydra: As I already mentioned in my post Bleu 2 - electronic music - transcription , I composed the electronic music for Bleu 2 using as source material only Bleu 1 , a set of three clarinet improvisations (well, clarinet in its extended meaning: bass clarinet , basset-horn , and contrabass clarinet ). No other sample, nor synthesizers of any kind, but only sound processing of the original recordings. My additional constraint has been to make Bleu 2 the same duration as Bleu 1 . Feel free to remix Now, you can listen to Bleu 1 , download the files, and make your own remix. You can also listen to each of the parts while looking at Miró 's corresponding painting . These 3 improvised miniatures are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License . You can listen to Bleu 2 , my "rem...

On August 31st, I finished the score of Bleu 3 , a composition for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. Today, I wrote program notes : I composed Bleu 3 during the summer 2007. The piece has been inspired by the triptych " Les trois bleu " by Juan Miró . For this project, I adopted an iterative composition process involving several interests of mine. First, I recorded Bleu 1 , a series of three miniatures improvised on bass clarinet, basset-horn , and contrabass clarinet , using each of the three paintings as instantaneous inspiration. The next step has been an electronic music piece called Bleu 2 . All the sounds in this piece result from transformations of the Bleu 1 sound file through personal spectral processing tools. Finally, Bleu 3 is a transcription of Bleu 2 into a quartet for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. The eight sections of the piece are called Cristal , Fouillis , Louange , Ange , Abîme , Danse , Arcs-en-ciel , and Fureur . Bleu 3 is an homage to Olivi...

Back to work after a week off in New Hampshire! I find on my desk a very special transcription task... Indeed, for a new quartet for clarinet, violin, cello and piano, I devised a three-part composition process involving several interests of mine. Bleu 1 : improvisation and clarinets. I recorded three miniatures on bass clarinet, basset-horn, and contrabass clarinet, improvised on each of the paintings " Les trois bleu " by Juan Miró . The recording took place in the Huseac studios on June 3rd and 4th. Bleu 2 : Max/MSP/Jitter spectral sound processing and Apple Logic Pro editing. June 6th to July 6th, I used the recorded solos (Bleu 1) as a basic material, to process it with custom software programmed within Max/MSP/Jitter . I called the result Bleu 2, and you can listen to it on www.myspace.com/jfcharles . Bleu 3 : transcription, imagination, composition. I use Bleu 2 as an outline for the piece for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. I go back to work!