Harmonising India
15 Feb 2014 4:23 AM IST
Christophe Chassol, pianist, composer and music director performed his renowned composition Indiamore - Harmonise the Real with Laurence Chais on Tuesday. Organised by the embassy of France and Institut Francais, Chassol’s Indiamore offered a tribute to the hidden melodies of India, he created unforeseen musical encounters by attempting to blend a documentary approach into a purely musical work. The artist improvising piano jazz on the pictures of a film shot in India’s most ancient city, Varanasi, and Kolkata.
Chassol composed an intriguing piece by repeating the images of the film and treating their sound as a music material by harmonising the characters’ speech, songs and rhythm of their gestures with his own music. The film essentially captured the sounds of both the cities, the Ganges, the music and faces of sitar players, drummers, singers, dancers, taxi drivers, fishermen and children. The film also encaptured the sound and the chaos of the traffic and the spoken words of the characters. Chassol’s harmonic piece contained four different parts which explored the music hidden in every movement of India and was combined with his own piano chords.
Indiamore, shot in July 2012 was presented in India for the first time as a part of Bonjour India 2013 festival. It was also performed in Paris and New York . Christophe Chassol is the author of an oeuvre that defies classification. His compositions articulate voice, music, sounds and images in an innovative manner, the ‘harmonization of the real’ remaining central to his practice.
Christophe Chassol discovered music at the age of four. Impressed by the soundtrack of the film La Tour Infernale and sixteen years of studies at the conservatory, his ambition from the very start was to compose for films, unite sounds and images to produce music of great elegance, in the tradition of Jerry Goldsmith Michel, Magne and Quincy Jones. In the mid 90s, he began composing for the big screen, television and advertising. From 1994 to 2002, he became a conductor and then discovered the world of pop music by accompanying artists such as Phoenix and Sébastien Tellier.
The first encounters of Chassol with Indian music date from his teenage years where he heard rhythm structures and Indian instruments mixed with jazz through John Mc Laughlin and his band Shakti.
Chassol composed an intriguing piece by repeating the images of the film and treating their sound as a music material by harmonising the characters’ speech, songs and rhythm of their gestures with his own music. The film essentially captured the sounds of both the cities, the Ganges, the music and faces of sitar players, drummers, singers, dancers, taxi drivers, fishermen and children. The film also encaptured the sound and the chaos of the traffic and the spoken words of the characters. Chassol’s harmonic piece contained four different parts which explored the music hidden in every movement of India and was combined with his own piano chords.
Indiamore, shot in July 2012 was presented in India for the first time as a part of Bonjour India 2013 festival. It was also performed in Paris and New York . Christophe Chassol is the author of an oeuvre that defies classification. His compositions articulate voice, music, sounds and images in an innovative manner, the ‘harmonization of the real’ remaining central to his practice.
Christophe Chassol discovered music at the age of four. Impressed by the soundtrack of the film La Tour Infernale and sixteen years of studies at the conservatory, his ambition from the very start was to compose for films, unite sounds and images to produce music of great elegance, in the tradition of Jerry Goldsmith Michel, Magne and Quincy Jones. In the mid 90s, he began composing for the big screen, television and advertising. From 1994 to 2002, he became a conductor and then discovered the world of pop music by accompanying artists such as Phoenix and Sébastien Tellier.
The first encounters of Chassol with Indian music date from his teenage years where he heard rhythm structures and Indian instruments mixed with jazz through John Mc Laughlin and his band Shakti.
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