Jean-Francois Charles

Prisma is a group of composers and researchers dedicated to International Pedagogy and Research on Assisted Musical Systems . The next Prisma event is happening in Shanghai Conservatory as part of the 2009 Shanghai International Electroacoustic Music Week. From October 16th to 26th, you can attend workshops (including hands-on instruction by the best specialists of PWGL ), a series of conferences, and concerts. I have been invited with the following musicians and researchers: Hans Tutschku , composer, Harvard University (USA) Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi , composer, Conservatory of Montbeliard (France) Orjan Sandred , composer, researcher, University of Manitoba (Canada) Johannes Kretz , composer, researcher, University of Vienna (Austria) Mikael Laurson , researcher, Sibelius Academy, Helsinki (Finland) Carlos Caires , composer, Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa and CITAR - Research Center for Science and Technology in Art (Portugal) Mika Kuuskankare , researcher, composer, Center for ...

Above is the manuscript of Perpetuum mobile , the second part of PPP for dancing clarinetist. The music is to be performed legato sempre using circular breathing . When the clarinetist reaches the end, s/he circles back to the top, and can play it for as long as desired. The dance movement is notated in Labanotation / Kinetography Laban (just one side is notated). It should be looped as well. The movement should be very slow, inspired by the Butoh art of dancing . Perpetuum mobile starts at 2:25 in the PPP video This section of PPP is more minimalist than Stockhausen 's In Freundschaft , Harlekin , Tanze Luzefa , and other innovative pieces created by Suzanne Stephens . If you're a clarinet player, I hope you enjoy performing it!

This fall of 2009, I am fortunate to be appointed head teaching fellow for Harvard's core course B-54: Chamber Music From Mozart to Ravel , taught by Robert Levin (Curriculum Vitae on Harvard Music Department's web site) (there is a shorter biography on wikipedia). Attending a lecture by Robert Levin is a great experience. He believes that anyone can have fun listening to great music, and he is very talented to communicate his fascination for music. Whether you never listened to classical music in your life, or you are an accomplished musician, you will hear music differently after listening to him. For this year's edition of the course, he chose to spend some time with the following pieces of chamber music: Joseph Haydn String Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 33/2, Hob. III:38 (“Joke”) Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 25. Sonate in A: KV 256 for violin and piano Franz Schubert Trio in E-flat Major, D 929 op. 100 Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Second String Quartet Robert Schumann P...

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...