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Jean-Paul Dessy
composer
The world of Jean-Paul Dessy has firm roots both in his classical career (as cellist and conductor) and in the musical byways he has followed (rock, electronic music).
Nourished as much on the electric trances of Jimi Hendrix as on the sonic tides of Giacinto Scelsi, here is an artist who does not disown the songs of childhood: prowling refrains, the obsession of an elusive memory that somehow makes us waltz, the constant agitation of a sound that gnaws at us - something haunts him, which he conveys through gliding shifts and imprecations, exorcising it yet making it return incessantly.
Jean-Paul Dessy has written incidental music for the stage, notably for Hussein Chalayan, Jacques Lassalle, Nicole Mossoux and Patrick Bonté, and Lorent Wanson.
He has co-written, with Christian Fennesz, Scanner and Dj Olive, works that blend his own style with their electronic practices. He was awarded the Grand Prix Gilson of the Francophone Public Radio Stations at Montreal in 1997, and the Fuga Prize of the Union of Belgian Composers in 1999. His works have been played in France (Ircam, Présences, Manca, Musica), Italy, Spain, the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Canada, the USA, Russia, China, Poland, Romania, Croatia, Uzbekistan, and Japan.
As a cellist, Jean-Paul Dessy was a member of the Maximalist! Group and founded the Quatuor Quadro which has premiered more than forty new pieces. He has given the first performances of many solo works or concertos that are dedicated to him (by Victor Kissin, Claude Ledoux, Frederic Rzewski, Hao-Fu Zhang, among others), and the Belgian premiere of works by Olivier Messiaen, Giacinto Scelsi, Alfred Schnittke, Tan Dun, Eric Tanguy, and others.
The conductor Jean-Paul Dessy has recorded with the Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie the complete works for string orchestra of Giacinto Scelsi and Witold Lutoslawski. He has conducted the first performances - generally with the ensemble Musiques Nouvelles, of which he is musical director - of some fifty new works, by such composers as Iancu Dumitrescu, Philip Glass, Rioji Ikeda, François-Bernard Mâche, Pauline Oliveros, Horatio Radulescu, Fausto Romitelli, David Shea, Giovanni Sollima, Atau Tanaka, Dimitri Yanov-Yanovsky... Outside the classical domain, Jean-Paul Dessy has appeared with such singers as Arno, An Pierlé, Stephan Eicher, William Sheller and Louis Chedid; groups including Divine Comedy, Venus and Archive; jazzmen like Palle Danielsson, Paolo Fresu and Diederick Wissels; and such choreographers as Anne-Teresa De Keersmaeker, Frédéric Flamand and Wim Vandekeybusz.
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