Luc Ferrari (1929 to 2005) was a French composer, best known for his tape music and for what he called anecdotal music, in which recorded everyday life enters the piece without being disguised. Born in Paris, he travelled to the United States in 1954 to meet Edgard Varèse, whose Déserts he had heard on the radio, and in 1958 joined Pierre Schaeffer's Groupe de Recherches Musicales. Hétérozygote (1964) already let recognisable sounds into concrete music; Presque rien No. 1 (1970), a day on a Yugoslav beach edited down to twenty one minutes, became a classic of its kind.
Transversales Disques is very glad to announce the release of Solitude Transit, unpublished archives by electroacoustic music pioneer Luc Ferrari. Music composed for contemporary dance, choregraphed by Anne-Marie Reynaud. Affiliated with French Radio's Groupe de Musique Concrète, co-founder of the GRM with Pierre Schaeffer in 1958, Luc Ferrari (1929-2005), a major figure of musique concrète and electroacoustic music broke away to pave his own path of individualistic expressions of minimalist mus…
-bRt- group for music creationGaudenz Badrutt, live electronics / Estelle Beiner, violin / Jacques Demierre, piano / Jonas Kocher, accordion (Tautologos III) / Stephen Menotti, trombone / Manon Pierrehumbert, harp / Christian Wolfarth, percussion
Artistic direction: Gaudenz Badrutt & Jonas Kocher
Liner notes by Lê Quan Ninh:Free improvisation is defined, among other things, by its practioners' refusal to rely on a form composed by others. Partially, perhaps, from pride, but above all from playfu…
* Rare private press CD * By a beautiful day of end of summer, September 20, 2004, my hosts Maria Bella and Miguel, involved me in a hazardous route in the streets of Madrid. The finality was to record sound elements which could be useful to me in the project “Itinerario del Sonido” to which they had invited me to take part. We thus went on, walking by bus by subway and some times, I recognized the singular places which I had already met several years, perhaps 10 years before and it was like vi…
After an already productive year, Alga Marghen, in the guise of their sub-imprint, Planam, delivers, “…et après”, an astounding double LP of archival material documenting the collaboration between Luc Ferrari and Ensemble Laborintus. Issued in a limited edition of 250 copies on vinyl, and bristling with tense electroacoustic sonorities at the forefront of electronic and experimental chamber music, it's among the most challenging, exciting, and engaging albums we’ve heard all year.
**Much needed repress.** Often, when looking back over the history if experimental music in France, easy divisions can be seen to emerge. There are the pioneers of improvised music, usually associated with jazz, and there are the pioneers of electronic music, including tape, synthesis, and electroacoustic practice. This separation is convenient and serves historians well, providing simple answers for the what and why of what occurred, but, in most cases, fails to represent the true spirit of any…
The venerable Alga Marghen returns with "Labyrinthe de Violence", their new release of previously unreleased recordings by Luc Ferrari connected to his Atelier de Libération de la Musique experience, this time sprawling across two stunning LPs. Capturing the four soundtracks conceived for the Galiéra Museum installation in Paris, we encounter the composer imbued with politics and social concern, in a dramatic atmosphere like he's rarely been heard. Absolutely astounding and as historically impor…
**2020 stock. 560 pages!** The sound arts and experimental music annual review's 4th issue, on the theme of utopias. Utopia belongs to those concepts that haunt both the history of ideas and the history of artistic practice. In this fourth issue,Tacetsets off to listen to the sounds of utopia emerging from sound art and experimental music, but also from sound design and our everyday use of sound technology. Mixing science-fiction short stories, theoretical analysis and artists' writings, this i…
**Limited edition of 300 vinyl copies, comes with a 30x30cm 4-page booklet. Gatefold cover** 2019 has been a fantastic year for the late, great master of electroacoustic music, Luc Ferrari. We’ve witnessed the release of two astounding LPs of archival works - Photophonie, via Transversales Disques, and Music Promenade / Unheimlich Schön, via Recollection GRM, not to mention the incredible, sprawling volume, Complete Works, published by Ecstatic Peace Library. Now we’re thrilled to see yet anoth…
Since their launch in 2017, the Paris based imprint, Transversales Disques, has done the seemingly impossible. Not only have they carved out an entirely singular place in the contemporary landscape of reissues and archival releases, but they’ve raised the bar. Largely focusing on previously unreleased recordings and works, one after another, they’ve built an astounding catalog of efforts by seminal artists like Bernard Parmegiani, Philip Glass, François Bayle, Ennio Morricone, Igor Wakhevitch, a…
**Includes a 12 page accordion-style booklet with documents from Luc Ferrari's archive** L’Escalier des Aveugles, or The Stairway of the Blind, was commissioned in November 1990 by Spanish National Radio (Radio Nacional de España). Asked for a piece to premiere as part of the European Day of Music, Luc Ferrari returned with a radiophonic concept that organised his anecdotal music into montage form, sequencing short, elusive narratives in a successive way.The completed composition is formed of th…
This outstanding LP (originally published in 1969 for the US market) together a selection of music recorded at GRM, mostly during early 60s. Le Groupe de Recherches Musicales (The Group of Musical Research) of the O.R.T.F. (Office of the French Radio-Television) is known in the world principally as the promoter of an original technique of realization as well as reflection : Musique concrète. For more than fifteen years, the Groupe de Recherches Musicales has thus founded its experience, its meth…
Cacophonic present a reissue of Musique Expérimentale, originally released in 1962. Further concrète explorations from the second generation of forward-thinking sonic auteurs that would push the boundaries of experimental music known collectively as the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, founded by Pierre Schaeffer. Having found a job in 1936 at Radiodiffusion Française (later Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française, or RTF) as an engineer, Schaeffer developed a newly found interest in music and with t…
Complete Music For Films 1960-1984 is a three-CD set that gathers Luc Ferrari's complete works for films from 1960-1984, including electronic pieces, concrete music made in GRM, and some hybrids including traditional instruments. Very rare pieces, most of which are unpublished (including collaborations with Jean Cocteau and Jean Tinguely), are presented here for the first time, offering a complete scope of the innovative 20th century composer's foray into film music. Complete Music For Films 196…
Unreleased material by Luc Ferrari, released here on Sub Rosa's Early Electronic series. Two tracks from the forthcoming three-CD box set devoted to Luc Ferrari's film music. Not only does the collection reveal a little-known chunk of Ferrari's oeuvre as a composer for the screen, it also sheds light on the ties between cinema and musique concrète, especially during the fruitful period that stretched from the 1960s to the 1980s. Tinguely (1967) is a musique concrète piece for a television p…
In the field of biology Heterozygous (Hétérozygote) means: a plant whose heredity is mixed. It implies that Hétérozygote, composed between December 1963 and March 1964, is an attempt to engineer a language located both on the musical and on the dramatic plane. You could call this music "Anecdotal Music" for if the organization of events is purely musical, their choice suggests situations justified at two levels: the music and the anecdote. Luc Ferrari explains the piece Petite Symphonie Int…
French edition. Edited by Brunhild Ferrari and Jérôme Hansen. Foreword by Jim O’Rourke. Introduction by Brunhild Ferrari. Interview with Luc Ferrari by Pierre-Yves Macé and David Sanson. Luc Ferrari’s writings, most of them previously unpublished. A pioneer of musique concrète at the beginning of the Groupe de Recherche Musicales in Paris (GRM), Luc Ferrari (1929-2005) is one of the most important and intriguing figures of the last forty years.
Three works for viola and tape or electronics played by Vincent Royer: Luc Ferrari's Ephémère in a 2012 version by Brunhild Ferrari, her Le Piano Englouti, and Royer's live improvisation on Ferrari's Ce qu'a vu le Cers.
Temporary Super Offer! Reissue of 1960 BAM label release. Musique Concrète represents an important milestone in the development and progression of the genre of the same name. It marks a crossroad for the genre and its originator, Pierre Schaeffer and another of the genre's most important protagonists, Pierre Henry. In 1942, Schaeffer and Jacques Copeau founded the Studio d'Essai (renamed Club d'Essai in 1946) as part of Radiodiffusion Française studios in order to experiment with radiophonic tec…
Tautologos III' (1969) from Luc Ferrari performed by GOL (Jean-Marcel Busson : electronics (Metacrackle, Luxonic), charango. Frédéric Rebotier : voice, clarinet, objects. Ravi Shardja : bass, electric mandoline, flute, sanza) and Brunhild Meyer-Ferrari, voice, cardboard. 'Havresac' (2012) by Gol & Brunhild Meyer-Ferrari.
Red vinyl edition, limited 250 copies. to Sub Rosa presents two substantial pieces from electro-acoustic musique concrete innovator Luc Ferrari: "Programme commun pour clavecin et bande magnetique" (1972), performed by Elisabeth Chojnacka, and another previously-unreleased piece that he held dear: "Les emois d'Aphrodite" (1986/1998), performed by San Francisco's MC Band under his direction. "'Programme commun...': Although cheerful, this piece of music asks a serious question: can one separate …
2007 release, complex book (texts in French with a translation into Engish) richly illustrated, containing a precious CD with Luc Ferrari's earlier concrete music pieces, dated 1959.Luc Ferrari trained in music since a very young age and continued his composition and piano studies, until a case of tuberculosis in his youth interrupted his career as a pianist. From then on he mostly concentrated on musical composition. During this illness he had the opportunity to become acquainted with the radio…
2011 release. Satoko Inoue is an experienced performer of Ferrari’s works and had a lively exchange of ideas with the composer, who was also present at the recording sessions. No wonder then that precisely those ideas of open work and its “anecdotal” interpretation were the ones that were most important to him – as such sounds were to him always abstract at the core, even if he first illustrated them in a very visual and associative way. Satoko Inoue writes: “We discussed, he explained ab…
Originally published in France in 2002, Jacqueline Caux’s Presque Rien avec Luc Ferrari is the first book to offer a comprehensive and insightful look into the work and career of one the most pioneering music composers of the second half of the 20th century. Errant Bodies Press is pleased to release the English edition translated by Jérôme Hansen.True to the genre-defying career of Luc Ferrari, who passed away in 2005 at the age of 76, the book skilfully assembles original interviews conducted b…
With the legendary “Studio Reihe Neuer Musik” series, Wergo created a trademark of advanced contemporary music in the Sixties of the past century already. On the occasion of its 50th anniversary, the label now releases these highlights of 20th-century music history in an excellent sound quality on CD for the first time.In "Und so weiter pour piano électrique et bande magnétique", the piano and tape sounds become interwoven in a complex dialogue. "Music Promenade. Mixage originale“ – created in t…
In 1981/1982 the French composer Luc Ferrari produced the radio play “Jetzt – oder wahrscheinlich ist dies mein Alltag, in der Verwirrung der Orte und der Augenblicke” [“NOW – or Probably This Is My Everyday Life in the Confusion of Places and Moments”] with the Hessischer Rundfunk. Like other earlier radio plays of Ferrari, “JETZT” as “radio play on the radio play” is a special case between music, radiophonic art and narrative radio play. The dialogues between Luc Ferrari and his wife Brunhi…
Populista serie. Rinus van Alebeek played back Luc Ferrari 'Cycle des Souvenirs' on the 29th of October 2010 in composer's flat in Montreuil. Walking around, he recorded it again with his Sony Walkman. Brunhild Ferrari read liner notes of the CD release of 'Cycle des Souvenirs'
A rare collaboration, Visitation unites French turntablist eRikm and electroacoustic pioneer Luc Ferrari for a masterclass in musique concrète and sonic collage, echoing the legacy of Pierre Schaeffer.
Three works by Luc Ferrari: Visage 2 (1955-56) and Après presque rien (2004), both first recordings with Musiques Nouvelles and Art Zoyd, and Madame de Shanghai for three flutes and digital sounds.
DVD of two filmed portraits made by Luc Ferrari and Gérard Patris for French TV in the 1960s: Stockhausen rehearsing Momente, and Hommage à Edgard Varèse, released here for the first time with English subtitles.
** Edition limited to 350 copies, includes an insert with the complete score by Luc Ferrari. ** Luc Ferrari conceived this work in 1977 as a sequence of seven individually or collectively improvised exercises for tape and any instrument or group of instruments. Never performed before, "Exercices d'improvisation" have been released by the GOL collective and issued now on LP by PLANAM. The seven exercises follow each others in a suite of growing intensity where GOL acoustic and electric instrument…
Alga Marghen proudly presents the first record edition ever by Brunhild Meyer-Ferrari, a very refined and talented german composer, wife of Luc Ferrari with whom she collaborated for over 40 years in creating some of the most beautiful sound works ever created in the past decades. First there was "Et tournent les sons dans la Garrigue" that Luc Ferrari composed in 1977 before "Exercises d’Improvisation" in the same year (a previous unreleased work, soon to be issued on the Planam label). These t…
Alga Marghen presents Éphémère I & II (for tape, or to be played with various instruments) -- two previously-unpublished masterpieces which represent for several reasons a very specific moment in the creative life and catalog of Luc Ferrari. Even if Ferrari's perfect skill in creating some of the most beautiful sonic works ever is now well known to the large audience appreciating his music, the undetermined character marking the two works presented here is quite surprising. Luc Ferrari was tempt…
Vinyl-only release. Performers: Jean-Philippe Collard-Neven (piano); Claude Berset (piano); Vincent Royer (viola). Sub Rosa presents the first release after their Luc Ferrari trilogy. Didascalies 2 is not to be confused with 2007's Didascalies (SR 261CD) -- this is another composition entirely, never published before. "The other day I found a file from 1993, a score for two pianos entitled 'Revenir à la Note de Départ' (trans. 'Getting Back To The Initial Note'). So I decided to turn it i…
An inedite work by the great composer Luc Ferrari: 'chantal, ou le portrait d'une villageoise' 1977-1978. Stereo magnetic tape. Mastering: Jérôme Joy, Meriol Lehmann-Avatar.
One of his final works, Les Arythmiques finds the late musique concrète veteran Luc Ferrari engaging with the cardiac condition that struck him towards the end of his life. Inspired by the jolt of electricity that was prescribed to combat his arrhythmia, this album is a collection of all the sounds Ferrari recorded on his travels over the final few years of his life - an assemblage of images he bluntly describes: "as one says of a drowning man's life passing before him". The forty minute montage…
Ultra limited release: "Danse" was part of a sound/visual installation called "Labyrinthe de violence". Previously unpublished, this radical experimental work has now been released on LP record in collaboration with the New Media Dept of Centre Pompidou (National Museum of Modern Art) in Paris for “Œuvres sonores 2”, a 2-day-event organised by Emanuele Carcano at Beaubourg on April 5th & 6th, 2009. "Labyrinthe de violence" was an installation for tape sounds and 2 slide projectors conceived in …
Luc Ferrari's composition Archives sauvées des eaux for two DJs was premiered in Japan and performed by the composer himself and Otomo Yoshihide at SuperDeluxe in Tokyo in 2003. This CD is a live recording of their first and the only performance, before the French composer passed away in 2005. The included are the intimate liner notes by Brunhild Ferrari and Otomo, and a 10 minute CD-Extra edition of live video clip slow landing, produced by studio Malaparte, as a bonus track for the initial pre…
First volume of Mode's Luc Ferrari series: Chansons pour le corps, built on interviews with women recorded in the Jardin du Luxembourg, and the symphonic tale Et si tout entière maintenant for actress, tapes and orchestra.
Archives Génétiquement Modifiées (2000). Société II (1967). Robot Records is honored and pleased to present two historic compositions for the first time on CD by the late, great Luc Ferrari. The programme opens with Archives Génétiquement Modifiées (Genetically Modified Archives), a work for memorized sounds from 2000. This composition (subtitled: Exploitation of the Concepts 3) was the third in a series of later pieces in which Mr.Ferrari revisited aspects of his early concepts and compositiona…
RESTOCKED The first DVD release on Elica is a beautiful 50-minute portrait of composer Luc Ferrari made by his friend Jacqueline Caux with Olivier Pascal, which is fully informative and acutely representative of Ferrari's spirit. Featuring Elise Caron, as Luc Ferrari and herself, and Luc Ferrari, as himself only, going through archive documentation, intriguing dialogues, invented autobiographies, music performances, evocative installations, sidewalk accidents, encounters with sound-sculptor Chri…