Jean-Francois Charles

When I arrived at Harvard as a Graduate Student, the only tenured composition professor was Julian Anderson . After his resignation, a new search for composers started, and the committee selected 6 final candidates. Chaya Czernowin is now a professor here. The other composers invited for an interview where: David Felder Lee Hyla Philippe Leroux Steven Stucky Augusta Read Thomas Hans Tutschku , who was an assistant professor is now a tenured professor in composition, as well. In the Fall of 2009, the Harvard music department circulated the following ad, starting the search for a third senior composer: The Department of Music seeks to appoint a tenured professor in composition. We invite applications from composers rooted in the American scene, who represent a broad range of aesthetics and backgrounds and who will reach out to other creative artists at Harvard and beyond. The appointment is expected to begin on July 1, 2011. Teaching duties will include the equivalent of four courses...

You are invited to a concert of new music on Saturday, February 27th, 8pm in Paine Hall, Harvard music department . Contemporary music ensemble Talea from New York will be performing the music of HGNM composers Sivan Cohen-Elias, Ann Cleare , Bert Van Herck , Kristian Ireland , Hannah Lash , Trevor Baca , and Edgar Barroso . With composer Hillary Zipper , we'll be in charge of the sound system for Sivan and Ann's pieces. They chose to have the instruments (and voices) amplified to reveal some details of their delicate compositions.

I'm just back from the Saturday's Modern Strengthening dance class at the Harvard Dance Center . This is the first movement class I took when I arrived in Cambridge, and I'm taking it again this Spring, my last semester here. Jodi Leigh Allen , who is teaching the class, is one of the great artists taking part in the Harvard Dance Program. She offers a unique blend of running, jumping jacks, countless pliés, dégagés, military style push-ups, boxer style ABC sit-ups, Horton technique flat backs, and - oh yes - techno music. Today, we didn't have time for free weights, but we'll get to them next week! Jodi is staging her piece Breathe in March of 2010. The announcement in the Harvard Office for the Arts' blog is perfectly entitled Pushing the Boundaries of Physicality . make art. we can help. Office for the Arts' motto. Take Jodi's class, you won't regret it... For sure, I'm stronger now than when I arrived here a couple of years ago!

Last year, the contemporary classical music ensemble Alea III performed the première of my composition Viola palustris . It would be fair to speak of Third Stream Music , since the piece is a concerto for a jazz soloist and a classical music ensemble. Watch on youtube: Third Stream Music - Viola palustris by Alea III Alea III, dedicated to new music Alea III is giving his Young Composers' Workshop Concert this Wednesday, January 27th, at 7:30pm in TSAI performance center, in Boston. The exciting program includes new music by the following composers: Graham Dixon (United Kingdom) Kittinger’s Fall Aaron Krerowicz (USA) Asterisk Lina Tonia (Greece) Prismatic Eun Young Lee (Korea) Yeol-doo-dal Mohammed Fairouz (United Arab Emirates) Symphony No. 2 Gon Hwang (Korea) Cosmorleans Concerto Antonis Anestis (Greece) Villa R. (homage à Paul Klee) Miles Bergsma (USA) Phoenix If you are a composer, make sure you check the Alea III's composition competition (you may submit an a...

Next week, Spring courses start at Harvard University . I am very excited to be a Head Teaching Fellow for the course The Physics of Music and Sound , taught by Professor Eric Heller . Eric Heller is a true sound lover, but his interests cross many boundaries, as you can check on the Heller Group page . A Gen Ed course All incoming students at Harvard College must complete, over the course of their undergraduate education, one letter-graded course in each of the eight categories in the Program in General Education . One goal is to ensure that the undergraduate education encompasses a broad range of topics and approaches. The Physics of Music and Sound are in the category Science of the Physical Universe . As Pr. Heller says in the course syllabus: In keeping with the new GenEd philosophy, the class will be made as participatory as possible. Discussions, live demonstrations of experiments, student demonstration of voice and instruments, computer experiments that you can also easily d...

After I wrote the Computer Music Journal article A Tutorial on Spectral Sound Processing Using Max/MSP and Jitter , I made available a number of Max patches designed to study graphical sound processing, time stretching, and spectral audio freeze , and to create new music! Several professors use these patches when they teach the FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) in Max and its musical applications. you'll have to browse down the page to find my name & the associated patches These patches disappeared from cycling74's web site when they revamped it in November of 2009. Good news, the share page is back; download here 16 free spectral Max patches : 1-record-spectrum-in-matrix record sound directly in spectral domain 2-record-play-frame-by-frame schematic playback 3-record-play-speed-control playback slower or faster 4-explore-the-sonogram the sonogram is an essential tool for the modern musician 5-spectrum-your-graphical-transformations build your own graphical sound processing ...

Looking for the studio album? Visit www.electroclarinet.com The draft of Electroclarinet 1 My score for the première of Electroclarinet 1 A serial composition inspired by Steve Vai and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart As you may recall, this title was one of the slides in my Shanghai Max MSP (and beyond) presentation . The Steve Vai influence may be obvious (when I was composing, I discovered his double DVD Where the Wild Things Are .) So I'll try to highlight how the piece is related to twelve-tone serialism and Mozart . The easiest link is Mozart: you might have already recognized that the last minute of Electroclarinet 1 is no more than 18/60 - True Night , a Mozart-inspired minute of music. Now, how is this music serial? Well, it turns out that 18/60 - True Night is not just the last section of Electroclarinet 1, but really a seed for the whole composition. You can see that by comparing the draft above with the score of 18/60 - True Night . We can also trace the three first pitc...