Portrait

One of the most interesting composers of the generation that was born with Pierre Schaeffer’s discovery of musique concrète, Christian Calon developed in his works a unusually strong evocative vein that links him stylistically to his mentor Francis Dhomont. His musical interests shifted from acousmatics to hörspiel when he relocated in Berlin in the mid-’90s.

Born in Marseille (France) in 1950, only a few years after Schaeffer and Pierre Henry’s first experiments with electroacoustics, Christian Calon started his career as a composer in Montréal. There he created his first works and co-founded the Canadian Electroacoustic Community. Paradis (1984) was his first major opus, but Portrait d’un visiteur, premiered the following year, was the piece that introduced him to the world, thanks to a first prize at the 1985 Luigi Rossolo international competition. His love for long works with complex architectures and multi-level metaphors seduced aficionados of sound art. His first CD, Ligne de vie: récits électriques (“Life Line: Electrical Tales,” 1990) was the first item to be released by the Montréal label empreintes DIGITALes, who would soon grow up to become a leader in electroacoustic music.

In 1991, Calon was offered the musical direction of the studios of the Groupe de Musique Expérimentale de Marseille. He stayed there until 1995, creating a few more works including Les corps éblouis, released on CD. In 1995-1996 he was artist in residency at the DAAD in Berlin and decided to relocate there permanently. The world capital of the hörspiel had quite an influence on him and he started to apply his poetic approach of acousmatics to literature. The results were two radio plays, Die Zimmer der Erinnerung (“The Rooms of Memory”) in 1997 and Le projet Ulysse (“The Ulysses Project”) in 1998-1999.