Rendezvous: Klangforum Wien, June 20 l Computer Music Design master class, June 8
Franck Bedrossian’s studies were relatively traditions: piano at the age of 6, first piano compositions at the age of 9, solfège, harmony, counterpoint, analysis, orchestration, and composition (awarded at the CNR de Paris et de Saint-Maur-des-Fossés). In parallel to these courses, he studied composition with Allain Gaussin. He then went on to study at the Cnsmdp: analysis, orchestration, and composition in Gérard Grisey’s class and then with Marco Stroppa. Concerning electronics, after an initial, very “concrete music” contact at the Cnsmdp, Bedrossian followed the Cursus program at IRCAM where the approach is more structuralist and analytical. At IRCAM, he studied under Philippe Leroux, Philippe Manoury, Brian Ferneyhough, and Tristan Murail. He also followed classes with Helmut Lachenmann at the Centre Acanthes in 1999 and at the Académie internationale de l’ensemble Modern in 2004. From 2006 to 2008, he was in residence at the Villa Médicis in Rome. Since September 2008, he has taught composition at the University of Berkeley in California.
Franck Bedrossian claims to have a double training, one from Lachenmann for work on sound and one from Grisey concerning the notions of processes and harmonic directionality. His oeuvre is marked by his investigation of sound, controlling its emanation and its end, distortion and its physical impact. Bedrossian works on raw and saturated sounds, on the idea of transition, of transformation and modeling sound clay. He affirms his taste for composers whose oeuvre is characterized by a certain radicalization of expression.
Influenced as much by the abstract expressionism of Rothko and Pollack as by the relationship of an image to a slowed-down time as seen in the oeuvre of Bill Viola as by the bare expression of Beckett, Bedrossian music attaches great importance to interpretative gesture and its physical characteristic. Searching for inspiration in music from cultures with an oral tradition, such as different musical trends from the 20th century, Franck Bedrossian is interested in jazz and rock, notably in their physical approaches to sound emission and performance, as well as work on natural emission of the voice.