Jean-Francois Charles

Last Sunday, I played with the folk group Sabaudia . This friendly group of musicians and dancers performs traditional songs and dances from Haute-Savoie. It is with this group that I first performed out of Metropolitan France, in Guadeloupe and Denmark, in the early '90s. The following pictures were taken by Martial Dray, thank you Martial!

Puppet: the manuscript Last week, I posted the live video recording of PPP for dancing clarinetist . The first part is called Puppet . You can read on my manuscript score different layers composed between 2007 and 2009. I wrote the music in Helsinki in 2007, along with a naive puppet story and guidelines for the movement composition. I actually choreographed the piece between February and May 2009.

A few months ago, I invited you to the première performance of PPP, a series of three studies for dancing clarinetist. Here is the video , recorded live on May 2, 2009, in Lowell Hall (Cambridge). Puppet Perpetuum mobile (at 2:25) Pipo (at 3:18) Next week, I'm going to post on this blog an excerpt of the manuscript.

Since June 22nd, I have been a Teaching Assistant for the course Great Ideas in Computer Science with Java at Harvard Summer School . During the first two lectures of the course, Pr. Henry Leitner introduced important concepts through programming in the Scratch environment. With Scratch, the students can focus on the notions of algorithm, conditions, loops, variables, without being overwhelmed by a complicated syntax. Scratch is very fun to use and makes it easy to embed images, sounds, and mouse- or keyboard-based interaction. Check out some examples of Scratch programs in these Galleries . At the MIT and at Harvard, you may often hear that " Anybody Can Learn To Program " (in the great book How to Design Programs: An Introduction to Programming and Computing , the authors push a little further: " Everybody Should Learn To Program "). With Scratch, " Everybody Can Learn To Program Fast ". Scratch and Max MSP versions of a simple interactive musical pr...

Maybe you know already James Ingram, who wrote Michael Jackson's PYT with Quincy Jones. But today, I want to invite you to visit the new web site of another James Ingram , who worked during a long time as Karlheinz Stockhausen's personal engraver. James Ingram enabled Karlheinz Stockhausen to reach the quality of engraving he wanted for his scores. Have a look at some excerpts . I particularly like Michaels Reise um die Erde and Xi for basset-horn (I studied this piece several years ago - the fingerings are given for a Leblanc basset-horn, but it's easy to find ones that work for the Buffet Crampon model). Scores are published by Stockhausen Verlag . Picture by Clive Barda, 1985, retrived from this Unsichtbare Chöre review .

During this summer of 2009, I am a Teaching Assistant for the course Great Ideas in Computer Science with Java at Harvard Summer School . Java may be the most musical of all computer languages... Don't forget it's also the name of a French dance : La Java Bleue (1938): L'accordéoniste (1942):

I want to congratulate and thank the excellent bassist Alex Tarbert, who performed the premiere of my composition for double bass solo Aqua Solo . Here is the link to listen to and download the track on last.fm: Aqua Solo - composition for double bass solo First part: arco Second part: pizzicato (starts after about 3 minutes) Have a look at the program notes, and a glimpse of the manuscript, on the concert announcement post. In case you are a bass player, and want to include a piece in a double bass competition or a double bass recital, don't hesitate to contact me!