MUSIQUES NOUVELLES

Jean-Paul Dessy / cello

Antoine Maisonhaute / violin

Andrι Ristic / piano


"Untemporary music (timeless rather than contemporary music) can be recognised from the multiple fraternal forms which transcend both epoch and genre. The imaginary folklore of today is as boundless as the universe […] Untemporary music is, etymologically, a term which expresses the life of sound or the sounds of life."

Jean-Paul Dessy

Directed since 1997 by the composer and cellist Jean-Paul Dessy, the Musiques Nouvelles ensemble, created in 1962, will soon be celebrating its fiftieth anniversary! On 6 December 1962, Studio 1 at the Institut National de Radiodiffusion (National Radio Broadcasting Institute) (today the RTBF) ensured the creation of Rιpons (Response) of Henri Pousseur as well as that of the Deuxiθme Sonate (Second Sonata) of Pierre Boulez. Today, Musiques Nouvelles is a focal point for musical creation and production which is responsible for the organisation of concerts and artistic events in Belgium as well as on the international scene. The ensemble, which has foreign composers and video producers in residence within the context of pluridisciplinary projects, regularly organises meetings about matters of interest on the music scene today. As virtuosos and inventors, its musicians wish to invest music with a creative sense of the present day and to participate in the creation of a repertoire for our epoch. By presenting composers who do not necessarily belong to the forces which are dominant in contemporary music, the ensemble is inventing a form of concert which is changing the way in which people listen to music. Musiques Nouvelles starts each season with fifty transdisciplinary concerts and performances (video, dance, literature, electronic arts, installations, extensions of the corpus of sound, conferences…), including twenty new works, several records, a periodical review and an internet site: www.musiquesnouvelles.com.

A composer, cellist and conductor, Jean-Paul Dessy was born in Huy in 1963. To date, he has directed more than one hundred international creations and almost two hundred contemporary musical works, exploring the diversity of sound within the confines of the sacred and the profane. His discographical work reaped multiple rewards: The Shock of the Monde de la Musique (World of Music) for the Intιgrale de l'œuvre pour orchestre ΰ cordes (Entire Orchestral Works for Strings) of Giacinto Scelsi in 2000, the distinction of Classica (Classics) for the Intιgrale de l'œuvre pour orchestre ΰ cordes (Entire Orchestral Works for Strings) of Jean Rogister (2000) and the five stars of the BBC Magazine for that of Witold Lutoslawski (2001). Also favourably received by international music critics are the Classical Works of David Shea (Tzadik, 2002), Op. of Rioji Okeda (Touch, 2002), Partita of Victor Kissine (Soyuz, 2003), Jiao d'Alexander Rabinovitch (Megadisc, 2008), and, very recently, Les concertos pour claviers of Dimitri Yanov-Yanovsky (Le Chant du Monde (Songs of the World)/Harmonia Mundi), 2010). Jean-Paul Dessy directed his opera Kilda, l'ξle des hommes-oiseaux (The Island of Birdmen) at the opening of the Edinburgh Festival in 2009 and the Parisian creation in 2010 of the opera Julie of Philippe Boesmans, mis en scθne by Matthew Jocelyn. A lover of sound, he experiments with Scanner and DJ Olive at Sub Rosa with dynamic "comprovisations", a work which is open to the digital world as well as to acoustic composition.

Le Chant du Monde (Songs of the World)/Harmonia Mundi has published two CDs devoted to the compositions of Jean-Paul Dessy: The Presents presents (LDC 2781144 - 2005) and Prophθtes (Prophets) for cello alone and of which he is also the interpreter (LDC 278 1153 – 2010).