Jean-Francois Charles

Last week, scientific glassblower Benjamin Revis gave a great presentation at the School of Music, University of Iowa. He explained the inner workings of the water clock designed by French artist Bernard Gitton . Benjamin already presented at the Chemistry Department and School of Engineering. If you missed the presentation, he is giving one more at the Department of Physics & Astronomy on October 28, 3:30-4:30 pm. Don't miss it!

A colleague of mine at the University of Iowa School of Music , clarinetist Jorge Montilla performed in April 2018 Electroclarinet 1 , a composition for Bb clarinet & live electronics. He gave a beautiful performance: I'm honored that the School of Music featured the live recording on their youtube channel: Jorge Montilla performing Electroclarinet 1 . For more on the Electroclarinet project, check out the Electroclarinet web site.

These last couple of weeks, I've been setting-up stone instruments for an upcoming composition for double bass and percussion. On this picture, you can see slices of agate, phonolites from Auvergne (France), lava from La Réunion, sand, etc. More to come...

Here is a video of the première of Masse pétrie , a new piece for cello and live electronics system Sampo. Cellist Marie Ythier gave a wonderful performance during the Impressions concert at Musinfo's festival Art & Sciences Days 2019 . Youtube link: Masse pétrie for cello and Sampo live electronics . Rencontres Don't miss Marie's new album, just released: she performs Schumann as well as new music by Tristan Murail in this album titled Une Rencontre .

I am honored to have been awarded a commission and residency at the 2019 Sampo Composition Competition , organized by musinfo . Following this award, I have composed a new piece Masse pétrie for cello and the live electronics system Sampo , which will be performed by cellist Marie Ythier . She has worked with many composers, and has recorded new works for cello and live electronics in her album Le Geste Augmenté . I'm looking forward to working with her, and to meeting the festival guest composers . What is the Sampo? The Sampo is a live electronics set-up that implements a simplified version of one algorithm available on the Lexicon sound processor LXP-15. Although the Sampo hardware is quite advanced and expensive (it includes a computer and a sound card), the software's capabilities are more limited than these offered by the original LXP-15 sound processor. Sampo implements a simplified version of the Pitch-Delay algorithm, from the Lexicon LXP-15 sound processor. C...

Petrified is a composition for double bass and live electronics. Bassist Will Yager premiered the piece during our Spring 2019 Laptop Orchestra concert . In this first version, I performed the live electronic processing live. Will asked me to prepare a standalone version that he could take on the road. Here is a screenshot of the live audio processing interface: In this work, the electronics consist of two layers: live spectral processing of the double bass, including pitch shifting, frequency shifting, noise shaping, etc. multi-playhead sampler, applied to sound sampled at different points during the piece. These sonic layers are also mixed with the direct sound of the instrument, and sent to a delay and two reverb lines. Tonight, Will is performing Petrified with the standalone live electronics, during the Electronic Music Studio concert, Stark Studio, Voxman Building, 7:30. Update: the score and Max patch for Petrified, version for double bass & live electronics , a...

This semester, I've been coaching bassist Will Yager and soprano Anika Kildegaard on their chamber music project LIGAMENT . They have been building a great repertoire of pieces for double bass and soprano. Then, we had the idea of working on Pascal Dusapin 's composition Anacoluthe , for soprano, double bass, and contrabass clarinet. Last week, during Ensemble Accroche Note 's residency at the School of Music, we worked with clarinetist Armand Angster and soprano Françoise Kubler - she took the pictures. We are performing Anacoluthe tonight, at the School of Music, University of Iowa , at 7:30 in the Recital Hall. You are invited! By the way, do you know what an anacoluthe is?