Jean-Francois Charles

What happens when a video/new media artist ( Daniel Fine ), a composer, an engineer ( Steve Baek ) and a ceramicist ( Andrew Casto ) break out of their silos and collaborate for a year? Come to Live Geometry , this Friday 4/20, 4:20 to 8:20 in the Arts Building West, University of Iowa. Presented as part of Dada Futures .

On March 15th, I drove to Pittsburgh for the 52nd annual conference of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts. I had the great pleasure to collaborate with ceramists Andrew Casto and Evan D'Orazio , as well as Engineering Professor Stephen Baek . We collaborated for the exhibition What We Made Sounds Like This , which presented ceramic pieces with live sonification. Exhibition in Pittsburgh during the NCECA 2018 conference Andrew Casto's Assemblage 158 From my notebook A core idea was to generate sounds from the negative space of the pieces. To this end, we inhabited the empty space around the 3D scanned pieces with 27 balls, which bounced around or inside the objects. The distance and position of each ball drove in real time a sound synthesis engine. The three engines in Ceramix : physics simulation, visualization, and sound synthesis Behind the scenes: live parameters in Max We took part to a panel presentation on March 16th: that was a gre...

Composed for the wonderful Denver-based Nebula Ensemble . A composition in three sections, evocative of the Gentian, an Alpine flower. On the illustration, the beginning of each section. I'll let you know more before the première, set for June 23, 2018.

Getting ready early January before the recording of pieces for clarinet & live electronics.

I Hear IC is a series of concerts taking place in different venues in Iowa City. On Friday, I had the pleasure of performing with composers Carlos Cotallo Solares and Carlos Toro Tobon at The Mill: Carlos Toro Tobon is playing the Buchla Music Easel, I'm playing a feedback cymbal with DIY FX pedal, while Carlos Cotallo Solares is playing the guitar and his DIY guitar pedal. We took the stage after the High Water Mark's bluegrass and Jill Abrusio's songs & ukulele; the night ended with a group of great young musicians, Non Prophet: check out their video .

Looking for the studio album? Visit www.electroclarinet.com Here is the live recording of Electroclarinet 4 , performed with Andrew Bentley on December 1st: Messiaen Synthesizer You can see on a previous post the schematics for the synthesizer : it is building on the tradition of the no-input mixer . I call it the Messiaen Synth not just because the piece is an homage to Olivier Messiaen: the synth itself is related to some of Messiaen's visions - it creates music out of thin air, and with two ring modulators, it is more about symmetrical harmony than about root-based harmony.

Double-bell trumpets have a long history, dating back to the 18th century. I've been interested in this instrument for a while, until I decided to use it in a composition. I'll let you know more about this new piece soon... Schiller Instruments' version of a double bell trumpet. Musical examples Herb Alpert playing It's Only a Paper Moon : In the United States, the double bell trumpet may be called a Shewhorn, at least when you are talking about Bobby Shew 's horn: More recently, Matthias Höfs creates a piece with extended symphony orchestra: Trumpeter Marco Blaauw performs the music of Georg Friedrich Haas : Below, Marco Blaauw presents his instrument: not only a double-bell, but also a quarter-tone trumpet. P.S. : on this page about the history of brass instruments during the romantic period , you will see a picture of Adolphe Sax's 7-bell instrument!