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...

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:

After the live recording of Dedalo Nero for contra-alto clarinet , composer Davide Ianni and I are delighted to share with you the studio recording. We hope you enjoy this beautiful piece! DavideIanni · Dedalo Nero Recording by James Edel on Feb 13, 2022, mastering by Jean-François Charles. Dedalo Nero on soundcloud . Davide Ianni and Jean-François Charles after the premiere on Feb 13, 2022.

Dedalo Nero is a beautiful composition for contralto clarinet written by composer Davide Ianni . I had the privilege to premiere the piece during the Center for New Music concert on February 13, 2022 . Davide Ianni just published the video, I hope you enjoy: I'm playing a Leblanc contra-alto clarinet .

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 LIGAMENT duet, featuring mezzo-soprano Anika Kildegaard and bassist Will Yager just posted the live video of our May 2019 Anacoluthe performance. It sounds great in the Voxman Recital Hall... I hope you like it! Special thanks to Armand Angster, who taught me how to play contrabass clarinet (and other clarinets!) and to Françoise Kubler: they listened and gave us advice when they visited the University of Iowa School of Music . Make sure you get and listen to their new Dusapin album :

This semester, I've been coaching bassist Will Yager and soprano Anika Kildegaard on their chamber music project LIGAMENT . They have been building a great repertoire of pieces for double bass and soprano. Then, we had the idea of working on Pascal Dusapin 's composition Anacoluthe , for soprano, double bass, and contrabass clarinet. Last week, during Ensemble Accroche Note 's residency at the School of Music, we worked with clarinetist Armand Angster and soprano Françoise Kubler - she took the pictures. We are performing Anacoluthe tonight, at the School of Music, University of Iowa , at 7:30 in the Recital Hall. You are invited! By the way, do you know what an anacoluthe is?

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!

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

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!

A couple of pictures from last week's concert with the Brest conservatoire's jazz orchestra and Chicago musician Douglas R. Ewart . The concert took place on October 20th, it was part of the fantastic Atlantique Jazz Festival . The jazz orchestra at the conservatoire is led by two great jazz musicians: trumpeter Philippe Champion and saxophonist Krystian Sarrau . The Brest conservatory 2013 jazz band Red Hills started with an improvised clarinet & flute duet Singer extraordinaire Zalie Bellacicco rendered the text beautifully At the end of the day, Douglas seemed pretty happy with the concert I was thrilled to share this musical moment with all of the musicians. Red Hills , the composition we performed, was inspired by mountains in Douglas Ewart's native Jamaica.

Looking for the studio album? Visit www.electroclarinet.com I already mentioned Electroclarinet 2 on this blog; this composition for contrabass clarinet & live electronics is an homage to Debussy's Cello sonata . An audio excerpt is now available. For more information on the live electronic processing, check these earlier posts: Live sound processing in Electroclarinet 2 - part 1 Live sound processing in Electroclarinet 2 - part 2

Last summer, I posted a few pictures of clarinet multiphonic sound sonograms (sometimes called spectrograms ). I just posted a new short video: Sonograms of Clarinet Multiphonics . It includes four sounds: Bb clarinet multiphonic series Bb clarinet multiphonic with glissando on part of the sound Bb clarinet split tone showing formants Contrabass clarinet from subtone to full sound (not a multiphonic, but such a rich spectrum) I'm indebted to Pr. Eric Heller , professor of the Harvard General Education course The Physics of Music and Sound , and to my clarinet teacher, Armand Angster , a specialist of all things clarinet.

In the Fall of 2009, I was a Teaching Fellow for Professor & Pianist Robert Levin 's course Chamber Music from Mozart to Ravel . In the syllabus, Pr. Levin included the study of Claude Debussy 's Cello Sonata . Along with many students, I found this rebel piece wonderful. So, I decided to compose an homage to Debussy for the Harvard Hydra Winter 2009 concert . I entitled this new work for contrabass clarinet and electronics Electroclarinet 2 . This composition is directly inspired by the second and third movements of Debussy's Sonata for cello and piano. Inspired by Debussy Sonate pour violoncelle et piano First pages of Debussy's score, with my annotations The Cello sonata was and remains a modern piece of music. In the first movement , you can hear a D dorian / Eb modal juxtaposition that we will later associate to Miles Davis' Kind of Blue . But to find such adventurous moves as the ones in the second and third movements, we may have to study the music of ...

Looking for the studio album? Visit www.electroclarinet.com In case you could not attend the Hydra December 2009 concerts, here is the video of Electroclarinet 2, a composition for contrabass clarinet & live electronics : I play a Leblanc paperclip contrabass clarinet , augmented with live electronic sound processing. Electroclarinet 2 is an homage to Claude Debussy. Do you hear that in the music? More about this side of the story next week...

Looking for the studio album? Visit www.electroclarinet.com The Hydra concerts are taking place these Thursday and Friday (December 10&11) at Paine Hall, Harvard Music Department . Hydra is Harvard University Studio for Electroacoustic Composition 's sound diffusion system: it consists in 36 speakers with multiple routing possibilities. During Thursday's 8pm concert, I will be premiering my most recent composition: Electroclarinet 2, for contrabass clarinet and live electronics. My set-up for Electroclarinet 2 (rehearsal December 8th, 2009) Electroclarinet 2 program notes Electroclarinet 2 is an homage to Claude Debussy, directly inspired by his Sonate pour Violoncelle et Piano . In this piece, Debussy follows in the steps of the great innovative composers: he explores the expressive power of new sounds and twists them with a unique sense of humor. In the tradition, he keeps surprising the audience with his fantastical imagination, a trait maybe echoed today in the m...