Jean-Francois Charles

On Sunday, March 1st, I'm playing the bass clarinet in the Ensemble Sable & Ciel, for the Ravel's Concerto pour la main gauche . I would like to invite you, but the concert is sold out. Conductor Joël Doussard designed a concert of French Music, with Fauré's Pelléas et Mélisande orchestral suite, and both the Concerto en sol and the Concerto pour la main gauche by Maurice Ravel . Pianist François Dumont will perform both piano concertos! Bass clarinet in A Ravel is calling for a bass clarinet in Bb and a bass clarinet in A. Given the cost/benefit ratio of the instruments, the bass clarinet in A has almost entirely disappeared. I am convinced that the timbre difference between an A and a Bb bass clarinet is less than the difference you have between bass clarinets from two manufacturers, or between two clarinetists playing the same instrument, or between 2 mouthpiece/reed combinations played by the same performer. But the bass clarinet in A did exist. For more i...

Come tomorrow at the Coin de la Rue café, rue Saint-Malo in Brest: I'll be performing with Bretagne musicians at the RRRR jam. In addition to a clarinet or two, I'll be using for the first time a new analog synth built with guitar pedals: Yes, you are right: before the analog signal path, I put a digital delay, to be used as a looper on a microphone input. But this mic is not necessary: the synth can also be used as a kind of a no-input mixer , with two ring modulators and a pitch-driven VCO (Voltage Controlled Oscillator). This synth constitutes the core live electronics set-up for my up-coming composition Electroclarinet 4 .

When working with the music students for the Désordre Electro-jazz project , I suggested some music to listen to, including a couple of electro-saxophone options. Here is a selection of my electric saxophone recommended listening: Gaël Horellou & NHX; Guillaume Perret & the Electric Epic; Matthew Burtner with his metasaxophone; Colin Stetson with well placed microphones around his saxophone. NHX I met Gaël Horellou when we arrived at the Lyon's National Institute for Applied Sciences, in the Music Studies section. He was as dedicated to music at the time as he is still now. Here is an excerpt of his NHX project: Guillaume Perret & the Electric Epic I like Guillaume Perret 's conception of the electronically augmented saxophone, a true electro-acoustic instrument, where both the acoustic sound & the electronic audio processing contribute to the musical expressivity. It's interesting to note that Guillaume Perret chose to work with several sidemen ...

Krystian Sarrau is a great saxophonist, and the head of the jazz department at the Brest conservatory. Last year, we talked together about creating musical links between musicians from different departments in the music school. We came up with a new electro-jazz workshop, gathering Quentin & Romain (bass & drums) from the contemporary music department, Lucien, Kristina & Joël (sax, keys & e.guitar) from the jazz department, and the guest electronic music producers Dusty Corners . We tutored the students during three work sessions since November. You are invited to listen to their new set: the concert is taking place as part of the Désordre festival: Saturday, February 7th, 11 p.m. Mac Orlan venue in Brest. More information on the Penn Ar Jazz web site.

Signals.Musique en salle d'attente is a radio program dedicated to Post-Rock , Ambient , and Drone . It is broadcast on Tuesdays, 10:30-11:30 p.m., on student-run Radio Campus-Besançon. I was honored to be featured on the show with Electroclarinet 6 , parts 1 & 2. Curator DJ L.K. knows an incredible amount of obscure, weird, or improbable music. He included my work in his 44th edition, along with music by Anjou, Black Rain, Arandel , Diabologum , Depêche Mode, Greg Haines and a group of musicians also from Brest: Dale Cooper Quartet & The Dictaphones . Listen to Signals #44 on mixcloud . Like Signals.Musique en salle d'attente on facebook !

Last Monday afternoon, I presented the Max development environment to artists from EESAB (Brest Art School) and engineers from Telecom Bretagne . Noémie Sprenger, a professor at the Brest conservatory , taught about interactive electronic music in the morning. The students then made groups to work on collaborative art-science projects. I helped a couple of groups on Tuesday morning: several of them planned on using Jitter, the video part of Max. Others were especially interested in the Arduino-Max connections. The students are presenting their work tomorrow: feel free to stop by at the Telecom Bretagne school, in the students Foyer, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. If you can't make it, I guess Sylvie, the electronics professor who is responsible for the organization, is going to report on the Telecom Bretagne Fablab blog . I'm looking forward to discover what they came up with in a week! Update Jan 26: students did post details on the telefax blog. For instance, Buildung, an interactive...

A couple of projects coming up for 2015: Composition of a new piece for the Austrian Bass Clarinet club, a bass clarinet sextet led by the amazing Petra Stump & Heinz-Peter Linshalm; Performance during the Electr[o]cution interactive music festival in Brest, in the Spring; Première of Electroclarinet 4, for Eb clarinet & (analog) live electronics; Design & composition of an interactive alpine cow bell... presentation in July, in the Alps. I'll let you know more about these in the coming months. Enjoy the end of 2014!