Music piece, 2003
Juliette Fontaine and Thierry Fournier
Ping-pong has been composed through a process of sound exchange with Juliette Fontaine. The instrumental apparatus is composed by a laptop and an analog filter bank. Every gesture of the performer is recorded in real time and re-injected into the composition loop.
Musical piece (3 male voices and electronics), 2002
Composed for the feature film Ce qu’ils imaginent by Anne Théron
Performers: Jean-François Chiama (tenor), Jean-Christophe Jacques (baryton), Jean-Loup Pagésy (basse), Thierry Fournier (electronics).
Sweetest Love has been composed on three poems by John Donne, the 16th-17th century poet and philosopher, a contemporary of Shakespeare (Song, Women’s constancy, A fever). Written for three male voices (tenor, baritone, bass) and real time electronics, the piece alternates solos and trios, with a cappella and electronic sections. It explores the most fragile register for each voice, while every section is written in the same tessitura for the three singers. This required a very special care and work on tonality for the singers. The electronics are mostly based on pulsations and oscillations. The electronic relation with the voices becomes principally organic, evoking both solitude and the constant presence of the body.
Musical piece (4 voices and electronics) for an installation by Marie Sester, 2000
Architecture of Paradise is a five section piece for 4 vocal soloists and electronics, created within Marie Sester’s installation presented at the SFMOMA in 2000. The piece is based on excerpts of Plato’s Timeus-Critias, which describes the role and story of Atlantis. The text is sung in its English version, by the soprano and alto. It is read in English and French by the two actresses. Beyond its original context, it evokes the concept of an ideal city, and its consequences in matters of political domination – considerations which remain absolutely topical. The piece develops a circular tension between several parts: the soprano-alto duo, the intimate reading of the text by the actresses, the electronics (oscillations, filters and saturations) and the real time transformations of the voices.
Musical piece and performance, 2000
With the voice of Alyson Wishnousky
Core was composed after an interview with the Canadian dancer and performer Alyson Wishnousky, talking about her sensation during movement and dance. The composition of the piece is written like a counterpoint between spoken voice and electronics: vibration and momentum, changes from stillness to movement, phases of keeping and losing control, in the very substance of the music. The piece is very gestural, where the interplay with the computer and the analog filters plays an important part in the concert.
(…) it’s all about time and movement and space they all form the same patterns together at the same time so it makes the heart beat faster and the breath speed up and the body warm up and it generates heat like fire so thats where the movement and gestures relate (…) its all about air and breath and breath generates life and allows more space opens up more space in the body in the pores enters air and water and fire they mingle a continuous spiralling of the spine spiral waves waves continuous waves (…)
Extracts :
Photograph: performance with Emmanuel Berriet, ISEA / Divan du monde, 2000