Jean-Francois Charles

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

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!

This is a live recording of Electroclarinet 5, for clarinet & live electronics . I performed it on Bb clarinet in November 2021, during jemFest, the Jacksonville Electroacoustic Music Festival at the University of Northern Florida . The score & software used for this recording are available: newfloremusic.gumroad.com .

Steve Grismore is an exceptional guitar player: he can play anything and is always ready for a new adventure (like when we created the piece Guitar School with the Laptop Orchestra at the University of Iowa ). He recently released Better Times (Are A Comin') , a new trio album dedicated to the music of Ornette Coleman. Steve invited me to present this Friday at the Jazz Seminar. I decided to talk about Maurice Merle , the Workshop de Lyon, and in a way, the links between Albert Ayler and Louis Sclavis . I'm so glad: I just received today in the mail the 50th anniversary album of the Workshop de Lyon. The CDs I'm going to play at the seminar: We're also going to play live, along with Jim Dreier (drums) and Will Yager (bass): Chant Bien Fatal will be the tune (of course?)

In April 2017, I was invited along with the Laptop Orchestra at the University of Iowa to take part in a performance with living legend Gōzō Yoshimasu . The organizers at the International Writing Program were wonderful, and trusted us completely for this concert mixing live performance, poetry readings, and music. I'm glad to share here selected excerpts where I perform on clarinet (I also played live electronics at some points in the show). The laptop orchestra sounded great this evening. Musicians were: Nima Hamidi, setar & live electronics Joseph Norman, electric guitar & live electronics Kris Peysen, electric guitar & live electronics Jacob Simmons, guitar & live electronics Carlos Toro-Tobon, Buchla analog Synthesizer & live electronics Special guest: Patricia Hartland, electric bass The Medium is the Messenger A show designed and inspired by Gozo Yoshimasu Readings and translations by Forrest Gander, Sawako Nakayasu, and...

A colleague of mine at the University of Iowa School of Music , clarinetist Jorge Montilla performed in April 2018 Electroclarinet 1 , a composition for Bb clarinet & live electronics. He gave a beautiful performance: I'm honored that the School of Music featured the live recording on their youtube channel: Jorge Montilla performing Electroclarinet 1 . For more on the Electroclarinet project, check out the Electroclarinet web site.

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!

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure to meet with amazing musician and clarinetist Kinan Azmeh . Not long after giving him a copy of the Electroclarinet CD, I discovered that he did gave a concert titled Electro-clarinet in Beyrouth in 2007 (here is a review )! That was a treat to have Kinan and his CityBand visit the University of Iowa. Kinan signed the music for the new video opera Iphigenia , a poignant multimedia work.

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

In October, we were lucky to meet with clarinetist and inventor Matthias Müller . He has worked for years on designing and performing with an augmented bass clarinet . Recently, he declined a portable version of the sensor system for any clarinet: the SABRE Multi Sensor . It includes an air-pressure sensor, a 3D accelerometer, two buttons accessible from the left hand, two buttons accessible from the right thumb. I love how they designed the buttons for the right thumb. You can change the orientation as you wish. Air pressure sensor and accelerometer are attached to the barrel. Graduate student Mauricio Silva working with Matthias Müller. Easy to connect to Max The sensors transmit data through Bluetooth. We had things working quite easily when tested on a Mac. I immediately tried to build an interactive delay in Max . It worked flawlessly: the sensors send OSC data. Mauricio plans on using the sensor for one of his main projects this year. I'll let you know his new music ...

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

Looking for the studio album? Visit www.electroclarinet.com Here is the live recording of Electroclarinet 4 , performed with Andrew Bentley on December 1st: Messiaen Synthesizer You can see on a previous post the schematics for the synthesizer : it is building on the tradition of the no-input mixer . I call it the Messiaen Synth not just because the piece is an homage to Olivier Messiaen: the synth itself is related to some of Messiaen's visions - it creates music out of thin air, and with two ring modulators, it is more about symmetrical harmony than about root-based harmony.

The wonderful Voxman Reed Trio premièred Crystals during the 2017 International Double Reed Conference at Lawrence University. Many thanks to Courtney Miller (oboe) , Jorge Montilla (clarinet) , and Benjamin Coelho (bassoon) ! Live Electronics In this piece, the oboe plays an acoustic part, and is accompanied by electronically-augmented clarinet & bassoon. Jorge used a PiezoBarrel pickup , Benjamin a Little Jake bassoon bocal pickup . Their sound was processed by an analog frequency shifting pedal and an especially programmed Eclipse sound processor. I love how Ben interpreted the cadenza part: indeed, this cadenza may be improvised. Listen to his version from 5:56 in the video .

Back online, the version of Treffpunkt ( Meeting Point ) bassist Franck Cottet-Dumoulin and I recorded in 2001. Treffpunkt belongs to the Aus den sieben Tagen series of text compositions by Karlheinz Stockhausen (see also this page for more information about the cycle). The file I shared in 2007 had disappeared, and I was recently asked to make it available again. Cover from the 1973 Deutsche Grammophon vynile That request came just after we heard Nomi Epstein at the University of Iowa: she is a composer who works a lot with text and alternative musical notation in her own scores. With the a.pe.ri.od.ic ensemble , they gave a great performance of TIME WITH PEOPLE, an experimental opera by Tim Parkinson. Here is another take on intuitive music, where Franck Cottet-Dumoulin plays with pianist Jean-Marie Reboul :

In April, I announced the concert where I performed In Transition, for Bb clarinet & live electronics , a composition by Joseph Norman. Well, the recording is now on soundcloud ! Composer Joseph Norman took part to the interpretation workshop on electro-acoustic music at Ircam in June 2017 .

In Transition is composer Joseph Norman 's new piece for clarinet & live electronics. I'm honored to play the première this Sunday at 7:30 in the Concert Hall of the Voxman Music Building. I hope you can attend!

A couple of projects coming up for 2015: Composition of a new piece for the Austrian Bass Clarinet club, a bass clarinet sextet led by the amazing Petra Stump & Heinz-Peter Linshalm; Performance during the Electr[o]cution interactive music festival in Brest, in the Spring; Première of Electroclarinet 4, for Eb clarinet & (analog) live electronics; Design & composition of an interactive alpine cow bell... presentation in July, in the Alps. I'll let you know more about these in the coming months. Enjoy the end of 2014!

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!

Looking for the studio album? Visit www.electroclarinet.com Electroclarinet 5 is a composition for A clarinet & live electronics, written in homage to Igor Stravinsky . I completed the clarinet part on May 11th, 2013. The score is built around four (circled) motives directly inspired by Stravinsky's works: the Three Pieces for Clarinet solo and the Piano-Rag-Music . Electroclarinet 5: the clarinet part (click to enlarge) The performer plays around the score, following paths of her/his choice. Routes from one basic motif to another are either written (circle), or to be improvised (on black lines). When the clarinetist adventures outside the box (black arrows), s/he starts again from any place in the score (including from another place outside the box). The live electronics part uses advanced playing mode recognition to adapt sound processing to the clarinetist’s improvisation and interpretation. More on that later!