Jean-Francois Charles

I am excited to introduce several friends of mine to you today. Mind Your Graphical Trouble is the 10th minute of the 60/60 project , dedicated to Éric and Christelle Simon. Éric plays trombone with the New Orleans Jazz band Jazz Tico . He is also an amazing school teacher and director: he and his primary school pupils won a price for their scientific experiments with a stratospheric balloon . The performer you will hear is Danny Mekonnen, here on alto sax. I took the picture on the left in the Huseac studios , after our recording session on February 9th. More than a saxophonist, Danny is a complete musician, leader of the Debo band , educator, and more. He is also a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at Harvard University. Read the Boston Herald's article about Danny and his band Debo and make sure you check out the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and their brand new CD! The graphical score This score uses graphic notation , we could say "in a traditional way." Click on the...

Since I self-published my score Bleu 3 , a number of colleagues and friends asked me a " score self-publishing 101 " session. This post is intended to help anyone interested in self-publishing, especially composers. Some of these tips may be equally useful to make a book of your favorite recipes (a nice present for your friends). Actually, self-publishing is quite easy today, and you will surely find useful the article "Upload" from Make magazine, issue #12 . First of all, why self-publishing? Why don't all composers work with a publisher? Last year, I discussed this question with composer Julian Anderson , published by Faber Music . As he explained to me, publishers have two roles: first , the promotion of the music, and second , the printing side of the business (making scores and parts available). They are especially useful when they promote the music and their catalogue is well diffused. This is the case for rather big publishers, who are well connected to...

Plane Mix is the 9th minute of the 60/60 interactive composition project . Many thanks to Cécile Pécheux for her participation and her present: a great DVD set dedicated to Lon Chaney , The Man of a Thousand Faces . Both Cécile and I have been struck by Tod Browing 's The Unknown with an original soundtrack performed live by ARFI's Marmite Infernale . I discovered this ARFI show (called Tragédie au Cirque ) during the festival Un Doua de Jazz 1994. That was an extraordinary experience, as well as my first contact with Maurice Merle . I strongly recommend to watch this movie, even if it will lack ARFI's powerful soundtrack! My first video remix I first remixed a public domain video: Spot News 1937 (using Apple Final Cut Express ). Then, I composed the soundtrack. Enjoy!     9/60 - Plane Mix on youtube

This Sunday, March 9th, 2008, at 3 p.m., I will take part in the "Fulbright Afternoon of Music" organized by the Massachusetts Chapter of the Fulbright Association and the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Enrichment Program. I will present my Leblanc contrabass clarinet, perform Lina for contrabass clarinet solo , and play a work-in-progress live version of Saturation . We will surely end the concert with a jazz improvisation over Autumn Leaves ( Les Feuilles Mortes ), with two great musicians: pianist Cedric Hanriot and violinist Leslie Levi . The other artists will be June Park (piano), Syeda Masood (voice), Jeff Miles (guitar), and a pianist I will meet tomorrow. In 2006, I presented the basset-horn, and performed Backofen and Stockhausen 's Seven Songs of the Days ( Die Sieben Lieder der Tage , from the cycle Licht ). Read the article that a fellow Fulbrighter posted shortly after the concert: Incredible Music . In 2007, I was lucky enough to play my composition N...

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 .

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...