Gérard Pape: String Quartets

Biographies

Gerard Pape was director of the UPIC / CCMIX studios from 1991 to 2007 and founded C.L.S.I. (Cercle pour la Liberation du Son et de l’Image) in 2007, an ensemble of composer-performers who sing, play instruments, and use computers “live.”

Monographic CDs featuring Pape's music were first released in 1992, 1998, and 2006 by Mode Records, with another released in 2007 on Iancu Dumitrescu's label Edition Modern. Two new monographic CDs were released in 2015 on Stradivarius Records and Mode Records. MusiPoeSci, a bilingual book with Pape's texts and musicological texts about his work, was published in 2015 by Editions Michel de Maule in Paris.

In 2015, Gérard Pape received a commission from the Sonar Quartet (Berlin), with funding from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, to compose his string quartet Textures Turbulentes et Formes Émergentes. The work was premiered in Berlin on December 11, 2016. A new, revised version of this work, which now includes extensive electronics and unalterable sounds, was premiered on September 10, 2022, by the NeoQuartet in Gdańsk, Poland.

In 2019, musicologist Lissa Meridan published a dissertation on Pape's work Harmonies of Time and Timbre. Harmonies of Time and Timbre.

Gérard Pape's mega-opera Le Purgatoire (based on Dante), which lasts more than seven hours, was released digitally in December 2021 on the Musica Presente label (Rome). This work achieved more than 54,000 streams worldwide.

In 2023 and 2024, further CDs and DVDs featuring Pape's music were released: Heliophonie with two of his major electronic works on Mode Records (New York) and a box set entitled Le Purgatoire / Purgatory , which also contains the entire opera, now on three DVDs in the form of a film, as well as two CDs with numerous other works for voices, instruments, and electronics composed between 1994 and 2022. This box set was released on the ACEL label (Paris).

Pape's book Iannis Xenakis et l'éthique de l'originalité absolue was published in English and French by UTEURP (Paris) in 2023.

The NeoQuartet is a Polish string quartet that focuses on performing contemporary classical music. Karolina Piątkowska-Nowicka (first violin), Paweł Kapica (second violin), Michał Markiewicz (viola), and Krzysztof Pawłowski (cello) often combine contemporary classical music with visual arts, modern dance, and electronics. The quartet's goal is to collaborate with contemporary composers and introduce their music to a wide audience.

The NeoQuartet is one of the most active European ensembles specializing in new music. It has played numerous concerts at the most prestigious festivals in Europe, China, South Korea, Japan, and the USA. The ensemble has recorded several CDs for Polish, German, Greek, and American labels. The NeoQuartet is the winner of the 2018 Pomeranian Art Award and has been nominated for other prestigious Polish awards: Sztorm Roku and Fryderyk (the Polish Grammy Award).

In 2017, NeoQuartet began playing electric instruments with synthesizers and loop stations. This project is called “Neo Electric Quartet” – the only electric string quartet in the world that plays new music. NeoQuartet organizes the NeoArte Synthesizer of Arts Festival, founded in 2012, which takes place every year in Gdańsk. The main idea behind this annual event is to introduce contemporary classical music to a wide audience. The festival brings together renowned composers, artists, and talented young musicians to convey a new musical perspective on our times. The first edition of New Music Spectrum took place in October 2012 in Gdańsk, Poland. Since 2013, the concept of the festival has been gradually expanded to include workshops for composers, workshops for contemporary improvisation, and workshops for children. NeoArte, an association founded by the NeoQuartett, regularly commissions compositions from Polish and foreign composers.

www.neoquartet.pl