Denis Dufour - Spot

Biography

Denis Dufour

Denis Dufour (1953, France), after studying the classics at the CRR in Lyon and the Paris Conservatoire, he is renowned as a composer in the field of instrumental as well as electronic creation for concert with more than a 170 works to his credit. As one of the pioneers of the 'morphological' and expressive approach to sonic writing, his works employ a wide spectrum of parameters in all sonic dimensions, contributing to the emergence of a genre that decisively connects all the arts with his interdisciplinary approach to composition and pedagogy. From the late 70's, he was a teacher at the Paris Boulogne-Billancourt higher arts education centre (PSPBB), the Regional Conservatories of Paris, Perpignan and Lyon and the Paris Conservatoire (CNSMDP), researcher (including GRM until 2000), lecturer, a host for many courses, workshops and master classes in France and abroad (particularly in Japan and Italy), an organizer and artistic director of several events dedicated to contemporary creation (the series Acore in Lyon, Syntax in Perpignan, Musiques à Réaction in Paris, Futura Festival in Drôme). He is at the origin of several structures, collectives and instrumental ensembles that continue to irrigate the musical life in France and worldwide (Motus, Futura, Syntax, TM+, Les Temps modernes…). A composer of a variety of instrumental, vocal or acousmatic works he has always been deeply involved in the transgression of genres, plunging his experiences in the field of dance, video, mixed works (combining instrument and fixed audio media), the musical theatre, radio art and Hörspiel, installations and sound environments. A large number of his works use texts for which he collaborated with various authors, including Thomas Brando with whom he collaborated since 1980. His works are published by Opus 53 and Maison Ona.

Spot

(by the composer himself)

Cycle ‘Souvenirs de Pierre’

Dedicated to Nicolas Horvath

There seems no doubt that American minimalist music had flourished in the aftermath of loops and sonic reinjections of Pierre Schaeffer's French studio where he invented ‘musique concrete’ in 1948, composing his famous Études de bruits. It is from one of them, Étude pathétique, that Denis Dufour renews his experience of a transcription of a singular sound world. In Spot, offering a careful and accurate translation, not in letter but in spirit, he transposes the ineffable of ingenuity, of the nonchalant instant, of the movement captured in the 'closed groove'.