Jean-Francois Charles

Keyboard Piece 1 is a composition for keyboard. Any keyboard. Piano, harpsichord, accordion, electric guitar, steel drums , tuned gongs, or more. The score indicates the notes and rhythm. Dynamics, articulation, and timbre are left up to the performer. Here is a synthesizer recorded version (hit play to listen.) The piece is in 3 parts, approximately: 1st minute: Kyrie 2nd minute: Christe 3rd minute: Kyrie Dedication and Inspiration This piece constitutes minutes 6, 7, and 8 of the 60/60 project. I am honored to dedicate this music to Bert Van Herck and Brigitte Urien . Bert Van Herck is a great Belgian composer. Listen to his recent piano composition Méandres on pianist Seda Röder's web site . When composing, I found inspiration in: Debussy's La Mer . Composer Magnus Lindberg revealed us a little secret: he always composes with the scores of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps and Debussy's La Mer on his desk. He is thus able to look for ideas inside...

Do you know the Wayback Machine ? It automatically archives the content of web sites. On the site, you can visit web sites as they were several years ago. I just discovered this service, and I had a look at the www.newflore.org archive . I founded the Ensemble New Flore in 2001, and we produced musical shows until 2005, when I moved to Cambridge, USA. With a great team of artists and technicians, we performed shows in France , Switzerland and Poland : 2001: Autour du Zodiaque 2002: Danse Orange 2003: Nowa muzyka 2003 - 2004: évolutive 1 2 3 2004: Spirales 2005: Lieu II It was a privilege to work with the following artists over these years: Jean-Luc Tartera and Maurice Gabioud (actors), Franck Cottet-Dumoulin and Jean-Daniel Hégé (double bass), Alice Gervais-Ragu (dance), Édith Le Rôle and Brenda Ohana (percussion), Elsa Biston (live electronics and sound diffusion), Paul Lienhard and Amandine Grevoz (highly competent technicians). So much fun Leading the Ensemb...

Since September 2007, I have been leading the Dudley House Jazz Bands at Harvard University. I am a so-called "Dudley Fellow", and my exciting job includes leading a full Big Band , taking care of a smaller and freer Improvisation Workshop, and organizing the concerts. You are invited to our winter concert: Wednesday, February 20th at Dudley House , 8:45 p.m. Free . Public rehearsal On December 12th, 2007, Nathan (bass) brought a recorder to the rehearsal. Hit the button "play" to hear Chant Bien Fatal by Maurice Merle . You are listening to: Michael Heller, alto sax Alan Lenarcic, tenor sax Jean-François Charles, contrabass clarinet Nathan Fosse, piano Nathan Haselby, upright bass Dan Jeffs, drums Program of the concert Big Band Egyptian ( Carla Bley ) All of Me (Simons & Marks) Hercab ( Gianluigi Trovesi , arrangement Corrado Guarino ) Choro Dançado ( Maria Schneider ) Combo Moving Parts (Ethan Fenn, world premiere) Improvisati...

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!

I am delighted to dedicate the 4 new minutes of the 60/60 project to a generous participant, and close relation of mine, Brigitte Urien . Saturation is a musical setting of Ruth Lepson 's poem Saturation (yes, it's the same title,) featuring the poet herself as the main speaker. Remember, I met Ruth last summer, and we had fun performing and improvising together . Saturation , the poem, was published in the review Carve - poems in August 2006.     Saturation in Music and Poetry Among the four great presents that I received for this piece, the one that surprised me the most is The New Media Reader . It is a fascinating book, that puts into perspective the Internet with the Oulipo movement, Eliza , and other essential projects of the 20th century. It gave me the idea of using Speech Synthesis to read a few sentences of the poem. This book addresses the concept of Saturation , not in water like the poem, but in information and communication. Speech Synthesis sounds l...

My first composition for cell phone! Click play to listen, and click on "1/60 - Cell 1" to go to last.fm and download the file. If your cell phone accepts mp3 ringtones, you should manage to use this one easily (check your manual...) Jean-François Charles – 1/60 - Cell 1 Maybe you recognize these bells: I just extracted them from 1/60 - Aria . You can listen again to the Aria: Jean-François Charles – 1/60 - Aria Each bell has its own sound In the Alps, each bell is different. There is a chance component in the process of fabrication that makes each sound unique. The sound depends also on the beater you use. In this recording, to stay within the theme of 1/60 (human / machine, natural / artificial), I produced artificial bell sounds, and I tried to give each bell a slightly different character. I used a physical modeling audio software, that enabled me to modify the "material" of the bells, and other parameters, such as how the beater bounces on the...

In March 2007, I was invited by Andrew Bentley and Sibelius Academy to give a week of lectures and workshops in Helsinki. The topic was live electronics - spectral sound processing with Max/MSP and Jitter . Andrew Bentley is not only a real connoisseur of the developments of electronic music (he was an early actor of the Composers Desktop Project ), but also a singular artist: I hope I will be able to let you know more about his art in the future. I really enjoyed teaching there, and the conditions were ideal: there was a team of 10 students, active and interested. each student worked on a computer with the proper software installed (Max/MSP/Jitter, from Cycling 74 .) we met every morning during 3 hours, over 5 days. Every morning, we had time for some new concepts, as well as hands-on patching, or collective thinking about design and other topics. Gig at the Feeniks Club Every Thursday night, the Academy's café is turned into a music club. Would that be great if every ...