Jean-Francois Charles

Dress rehearsal, August 2003. As an homage to Karlheinz Stockhausen , I want to share with you a text I wrote in 2003, right after working with the composer. Several noteworthy aspects of his work have not been given much importance in the comments after his passing away. One of them is the importance of performance practice in his music. That's one of the memories we musicians will keep after having performed the world première and recorded Rechter Augenbrauentanz ( The Dance of the Right Eyebrow ). The musicians clarinet and solo Eb clarinet : Michele Marelli clarinets : Rumi Sota-Klemm (by the way, Rumi played basset-horn in Montag aus Licht ), Antonia Lorenz, Roberta Gottardi , Maja Pawelke, Jean-François Charles bass clarinets : Petra Stump and Heinz-Peter Linshalm synthesizer : Antonio Pérez Abellán percussion : Michael Pattmann conductor : Adrian Heger In the recording studio, August 2003. Impressions (2003) Stockhausen is a master in performance practice...

A composition for clarinet and string quartet Nigritella nigra 's first part (until 3'50'') consists in a chord which color changes through the use of microtones. This is a musical image of the flower's vanilla scent. The short central passage (until 4'15'') is a deforming mirror. After that comes a distorted retrograde of the first part. The concentration of energy in microtones in the first part is transformed in more extravert gestures in the second part. The flower Nigritella nigra has a strong character! Avignon - Acanthes I composed Nigritella nigra in 1998, for my first participation to the contemporary classical music center Centre Acanthes . Sofia Gubaidulina was the guest composer, while Viktor Suslin was responsible for the composition workshop. You are listening to the recording of the final concert, featuring musicians from the Orchestre Lyrique de Région Avignon-Provence , conducted by Sylvio Gualda: Didier Breuque, clarinet D...

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...

60/60 is an invitation to take part in my new composition project. I will compose 60 minutes of music, partly inspired by you and by a present you offer me. Make a present - Receive a minute of music The process is very simple: You make me a present from my amazon wish list (see below) I produce one minute of music The music is dedicated to you (you may stay anonymous if you wish) I e-mail the music to you (if you leave your e-mail address) I tell the story about the gift and the composition on this blog I make the music available here, too Today, there are 60 gifts on my list. At the end of the project, I will have composed one hour of music. Here is the list: Update June 14th, 2010 It's time for me to put this list off-line. You may still participate in the project. Feel free to make a gift of your own choice. FAQs What kind of music will you produce? The music will feature various ensembles: solo instruments, electronic music, chamber music, film music, MIDI inst...

I received a nice surprise last week. Georges , a multimedia artist from Savoie, France, reacted to my post Lithophone - Agate Music , and e-mailed me a remix of my example. Listen to his Agate composition . Also, make sure you visit Georges' blog audiosource (in French), and maybe you will subscribe to his RSS feed. He declares his blog is about sounds, all sounds, the means of making them, recording them, composing with them, transporting them, making music or not with them . Some posts with sounds and stories I like (you need to find the link to listen to the music): Pondicherymix Grive musicienne L'aluphoniste and L'aluphone portique Variation pour sonnette

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...

Listen while reading! This fall, I have been proposed to produce the music for a very special movie: a commercial to be played in the waiting room of a pharmacy. I thought "Why not?" I would surely learn new things and improve my Logic Studio skills. Coincidence, on October 26th, when I was drafting the music, Robert Kraft was invited at Harvard. Robert Kraft is the President of Fox Music Inc. He gave me interesting comments on Dérives . But he was even more helpful on my pharmaceutical work in progress: Be more repetitive . The audience likes repetition. Don't waste all your ideas in a short amount of time. And the audience expects the theme to come back. Indeed, my first version was an accumulation of musical loops, very varied, because I was afraid of being too repetitive! It's good to use a clear structure . For instance, a 4 or 8-bar looping structure. As you can hear, the new version is very much 4-bar oriented. I synchronized the music with the picture throu...