Composer & Piano
Biography:
After completing a classical education (academy and conservatory in Belgium, then conservatory in France with state teaching qualifications from the Ministry of Culture), followed by studies in jazz and improvised music (including Berklee School, Boston, USA) and numerous specialist internships (including IRCAM), Patrick Defossez is, on the one hand, a polyesthetic composer who is immersed in the world of contemporary sound creation (Ensemble intercontemporain, public composition commissions, etc.) and, on the other hand, an active performer on the improvisation scene who is committed to interdisciplinary improvisational processes that incorporate, to a greater or lesser extent, the current digital possibilities of music-making. He teaches multidimensional music composition at a state regional conservatory: classical new music, mixed music (with new musical technologies), as well as all forms of improvisation.
As a composer, he favours an art of composition, a “polyphony of styles” between the structured languages of contemporary written art music, electroacoustic music, from mixed music (acoustic instruments combined with electronic instruments) to the much more “fleeting” improvisation. He is particularly fond of composition in combination with poetry and the visual arts (painting, sculpture, etc.), as well as video and film art. As a performer, he prefers the contemporary piano, both in mixed and improvisational use, as a solo or ensemble instrument, promoting new rhetoric and technique in today's piano, allowing the interaction between instrumental and electroacoustic worlds, the relationships between solo piano and electronically ‘accompanied’ piano, and between strict notation and ephemeral momentary art – not to mention interpretation in conjunction with poetry and the visual arts (painting, sculpture ...), video and film art.
University teaching: State teaching qualifications (Diplôme d’État and Certificat d’Aptitude from the French Ministry of Culture in jazz and improvised music), degree in composition in Claude Ballif's class at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris.
Albums:
