Billie Holiday, Édith Piaf and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf are three great ladies of music, born in 1915. Could we make them sing together? This was the subject of a performance conceived for the music festival Le pietre che cantano in L’Aquila (Italy) in 2015. This challenge raises several musical questions: what type of sound would be likely to link Billie Holiday to Schwarzkopf, Schwarzkopf in Piaf? What type of musical structure? Using DYCI2Lib software, the three ladies finally sing The Man I Love together. ImproteK, the earlier version of DYCI2Lib, already made it possible to intelligently link the harmony of the base material used (called “memories”) to the harmonic progression of the reference song (called “scenario”).
We are no longer in 2015: we abandoned Schwarzkopf on the way and will refer to four ladies rather than three (Lisa della Casa and Dianne Reeves having meanwhile invited themselves to the party)… Now gifted with listening skills, the machine can draw on its musical memory to react to the playing of the improvising instrumentalist, according to the categories that it has deduced by analyzing this memory. The process gives rise to fascinating issues with regard to musical notation and style: the choice of a common notation will define how the improvisation will follow the reference scenario, and the precise place where certain selected memories will propose their sounds and characters. clean, interacting with the structure. The result can be striking, explosive, surreal, kitsch; and often fun.
There was no video in the original project: it was then designed as an application of new computer architectures, those, musical, implemented by Jérôme Nika and those for images using OpenGL.
Biographies
Georges Bloch (FR)
Georges Bloch is a Composer and teacher-researcher, his compositions focus on interaction with performers or bizarre spaces. Georges Bloch notably composed for the Arc-et Senans saltworks space, the Beyeler foundation, and worked with improvising musicians such as Philippe Leclerc, Hervé Sellin, Jaap Blonk and Rémi Fox …
Georges Bloch teaches at the University of Strasbourg, is a member of the Experimental Research Group on the Musical Act (GREAM) and of the Musical Representations team at IRCAM. His interest in the lyric repertoire leads him to often work on musical dramaturgy and its relationship with film scores. He has been teaching sound analysis and film music for thirty years.
Hervé Sellin (FR)
Hervé Sellin (piano) is a former student of Aldo Ciccolini, Hervé Sellin has been a professor in the Jazz and improvised music department at the Paris Conservatory for nearly thirty years. He has performed alongside musicians such as Barney Wilen, Art Farmer, Slide Hampton, Chet Baker, Dizzy Gillespie, Branford Marsalis, Richard Galliano… His album Hervé Sellin Tentet: Marciac New York Express (2008) received numerous awards . Recently, alone or in groups, he has been exploring the bridges between classical and jazz (Passerelles, 2017, Claude Debussy, Jazz Impressions, 2018). He has also taken part in numerous studio recordings, notably with Michel Legrand, and accompanied singing artists, such as Charles Aznavour, Gilbert Bécaud, Magali Noël or Jacqueline Danno.
