Two contrasting pieces by French composer Michèle Bokanowski, recorded a decade apart, which nevertheless demonstrate her unique style.
“Michèle Bokanowski's art is one of densities, much like the density of a given colour, a given depth. Her sound textures are, indeed, profound, both in the space occupied by their frequencies and the sharp temporal trail they leave behind. Here lies the composer's immense talent that finds the right development for each sound, letting it blossom before altering it, adapting the musical structure to let the sounds "be", even if it sometimes means returning to the most basic form, such as a loop. This is a sign of great honesty and artistic sensitivity; able to stand back and let the music become music. It is the most radical, the most accurate gesture of composition. The two pieces on this record, dissociated in time, both in their approach and destination, nevertheless reflect, each in its own way, Michèle Bokanowski's highly singular and insightful musical intuition.”
—
François Bonnet, Paris, 2020
Michèle Bokanowski (born 1943 in Cannes, France) is a French Paris-based electroacoustic music composer. Passionate about music from childhood, it wasn't until later, at the age of 22, after reading
À la recherche d'une musique concrète by
Pierre Schaeffer, that Michèle Bokanowski decided to study composition. After classical training in harmony, she met Michel Puig, a pupil of René Leibowitz, who taught her writing and analysis upon Schönberg Theory. In 1970, she began a two-year internship at the Research Department of the ORTF under the direction of Pierre Schaeffer. Between 1973 and 1975, she took part in a research group on sound synthesis, studied computer music at the University of Vincennes as well as electronic music with
Éliane Radigue. She mainly composes for concert and for cinema (music for Patrick Bokanowski's short films and for his feature films
L'Ange and
Un Rêve solaire). She has also composed for television, theatre and dance. In her music, often infused with a mysterious atmosphere, she uses evocative and poetic concrete sounds, with a mastery of looping and feedback techniques and with an art of cinematic editing.
