Benoît Delbecq
pianist/composer (interview conducted over e-mail)
-Early (childhood…?) significant musical impressions/influences
My parents met in a choir in Lille. They were both amateur musicians (piano, recorder) and there was a strong presence of classical music at home. My Dad was also into jazz and gospel and had a small but nice vinyl collection from Scott Joplin to Armstrong, Tatum and Monk. Since catholic religion was central for my parents, we children were all due to Sunday church where as a child I actually loved to stand between my parents who sung different registers. This was my very first encounter with live music! When I was around 11-ish I think, a Congolese priest came to the church and he spoke and sung in Lingala language, accompanying himself with a traditional master drum and I remember it being a total revelation. I played some organ or drums sometimes at church. Then I found myself interested in artists like Manu Dibango and Fela Kuti and later on I felt very attracted to traditional sub-sahara musical and social practices. Jazz came sort of naturally, I think, amidst the pop music trend of my older sister and brother, but it was not until the age of 14 that I found myself scratching my head about the music and playing of Thelonious Monk that I felt fascinated by… that summer I played these Monk records in loop. I definitely wanted to understand more and got some harmony lessons with Parisian pianist Jean-Pierre Fouquey… When Monk died, the French TV news broadcasted a minute of a film where you could see Monk play. It was mesmerizing to discover his gestures and postures, I had no idea he was doing it that way, with such freedom. I remember my younger sister and I had then grabbed each other’s hand grieving for the loss of “Monsieur Monk”, as we called him.
-You participated in the workshops at Banff two times. Who were the most important people (faculty) for you there? Why was the experience significant to you?
All the members of faculty were important, but this also applies to students too, for we all had a lot of curiosity. Dave Holland, Steve Coleman, Muhal Richard Abrams, Kenny Wheeler and Abraham Adzenyah are probably the ones I felt the most attracted to musically speaking. It was the era of the fabulous Dave Holland quintet – I couldn’t believe I was going to study with these masters. I was totally magnetized by Steve Coleman’s rhythmic approach (shared with his accomplice Marvin “Smitty” Smith), of course the tunes by Doug Hammond too, and I loved the mix of rigor and freedom in Dave’s band. The Banff workshops gave me an incredible energy to keep going, and I was extremely impressed by the level of students like Andy Milne, Ethan Iverson, Ralph Alessi, Rick Margitza, Steve Argüelles, Owen Howard, Seamus Blake and Jorrit Dijkstra to name a few… it “kicked my ass” badly… after the first workshop (July 1987) I decided to go professionally into music. Before that I had been a student and intern in sound engineering. Studying with Muhal daily at the Banff Workshop (was it for two weeks?) gave me lots of information and freedom in my way to approach composition – I always think about Muhal when I write music, always. Banff has been a major shift for me, as for many others peers.
-Hask Collective….. what was the mission? How was it important to you? Why did it end?
We started with the idea of the Hask Collective about a year or so after Guillaume Orti and I came back from Banff in 1990. There were two catalysts: discussions in Banff with Steve Coleman about the MBase collective, as well as the example of ARFI de Lyon, a collective aiming for the “research of an imaginary folklore”. We believed we’d be stronger joining forces, and all the members had their own aim and way to find new forms and new ideas in music. “Hask’ was like an adjective, a gimmick, to approve something we’d like saying “C’est Hask!!!”. We ran a fanzine for twelve years, too. We stopped it about when I had a third child... I couldn’t spend as much time in the life of the collective. The administration and logistics of the collective was quite time consuming for us all and I/we only had 24hrs in a day. Plus the touring ! Also, Guillaume moved to Burgundy… so everybody went their own way – I’d founded Bureau de Son with Steve Argüelles and Nicolas Becker a few years later; Hubert Dupont, Stéphane Payen, Guillaume… everybody started their own non-profit… Years after, we still play together, and the spirit of the collective is still at play for sure. The end of Hask wasn’t sad. The last Hask festival in Paris was incredible… we might reboot it, we’ve talked about it actually. For we all miss the large collective commitment.
-KARTET….
Kartet was founded about 6 months before Guillaume and I went to the Banff Workshop in 1990. The letter “K” for Kartet was just an idea to express our interest in the Bartok idea of imaginary folklore and more globally an interest for non-western musical practices. Kartet played and recorded for 25 years, but we haven’t played a gig in 5 years. Nevertheless, we’re going to rehearse and record new music in 2021 and 2022. We believe we haven’t “finished” the work and we’re happy to welcome in the band a fantastic young drummer from Brussels, Samuel Ber. I first met Samuel when he was my composition student at the Paris National Conservatory (I did teach a one year-long workshop in 2015), and Guillaume, Hubert and I have already worked with him in various other projects. Our former drummer Stéphane Galland is extremely busy with lots of projects and collectively we wished to be able to spend the proper time rehearsing in order to let the new material grow, hence the arrival of Samuel. The four of us are now writing new material and we look forward to meeting again in the rehearsal room next May.
-Dynamics. I feel that you often deal with a very specific range in terms of dynamics…. On the softer side…. How did you arrive at this? Do you find more nuanced shading in that part of the dynamic range? Were you influenced by Feldman in this regard? Or maybe Cage?
Morton Feldman was a major composer! I first read scores of his at the Banff Centre Library in 1987… fascinating music… loving it... Nowadays I have to say I’ve drifted from less Cage to more Feldman. I have no real explanation for it, but I think it’s about the sound, the living sound you cannot dissociate from a meditative momenta.
When I play solo piano, for most of my work I prepare very specific registers of the piano for each tune. Sometimes only 4-5 keys out of 88 will trigger a prepared sound. Having a sonic balance between prepared sounds and “normal” piano sounds implies shunning loud or hard sound because loud does really “kill” the prepared sounds as they don’t render much power at all. I noticed that as soon as I started to prepare the piano.
It is true my volume range is reduced by it, but there is still so much dynamic within that range – in that sense, dynamic and volume are two separate things. I’ve always been experimenting with the possibilities of the middle pedal in order to wet the sound – it’s not like added reverb. It’s about the very low end strings naturally resonating to transients like a sitar does… gives a little more sonic array to the prepared notes.
I’m not a powerful piano player. I mean I definitely don’t have a big, powerful sound. I know how to produce it – and I use it sometimes on gigs when the drummer goes loud – and I enjoy it too, but it’s not the sound I prefer from the piano – although it’s totally part of maestri Monk’s or Cecil Taylor’s style for instance!
-Prepared piano… why? What is your current relationship to the “conventional” piano sound?
I guess it came from my curiosity in experimenting with sounds… I did play on the upright family piano with a brush I made myself when I was like 12 years-old… It certainly has to do with my sound engineering studies too (acoustics, electronics…), and my synth programming chops… but it became an everyday focus when I started to study Ligeti’s Piano Etude “Fanfares” in 1988… in order to physically understand some rhythm relationships I started to prepare certain notes to give them another sonic color. Also, pressing the key when the corresponding strings are prepared gives a very different physical feedback in the hand and arm. I found it was a way to discover new sensations in swing and time. As I said earlier I don’t have such a solid classical background… meaning I had to find my own ways to develop my chops.
Of course I love non-prepared piano too. And I do play with no preparations in certain projects. Within larger bands for instance preparing the piano is killed by the sonic power of the collective, and I don’t mind it at all. My multi-speed approach of the prepared piano has of course influenced my “regular” piano playing a lot, both musically and technically. I’m thinking about recording a solo record with no preparations, by the way. I have nothing dogmatic against regular piano!
-John Cage….. how has he influenced your work?
I knew some of Cage's works, but strangely enough not the ones for prepared piano. So, when I first heard the Sonatas and interludes on a record, I thought “oh he’s doing like me!”… hilarious isn’t it. I was 20 or a little more. Then I got mesmerized by many works by him – the reading of his book “Silence” among other writings, his pertinent distance to western contemporary music, his philosophy of sound and drama…
Attending a triple of Merce Cunningham dance shows at the same period also made me dive into Cage’s world. Fascinating and trippy. Now when I first listened (then read) the Sonatas and interludes, I remember saying to myself “wow such great work!”… nevertheless, I felt some creative intuition too… I felt there were many more possibilities with rhythm and polyrhythm with prepared piano that I started to go deeper, and started to instinctively apply some Carnatic music, Aka pygmy music, Bartok proportions, or some Max Roach or Ed Blackwell percussion fabrics… with ten fingers at play the combinations at the piano are so immense. It’s almost like being a percussionist with ten limbs, sort of. It gave me an energy for this particular research. It felt like following a light in the forest, really. Still does.
-One aspect that I find unique in your recent work is how you combine the “prepared” piano sounds with the “normal” unprepared piano…. In layers, and counterpoint and lead vs accompaniment. Is this very consciously developed?
Yes, of course, it is in constant correlation. I think the track that reflects it the most is probably “The Loop of Chicago” as in my last solo record version. Some peers ask me sometimes how many re-recordings layers were done and all that on my solo records. If you look at the film of this solo session, of course there is nothing re-recorded, it’s all played in one go. There are layers of timbers, layers of melodies, layers of harmony that are the result of 30 years of patient work and practice both at the piano and at the composition desk. I’m trying to develop a music where rhythm and melodies, as well as klangfarben melodies (melodies created by the very overtone plus transient content of statements) combine together in a mysterious way. It is very conscious in the conception, but also very intuitive in the rendering of it. The written material for each tune rarely exceeds one page, the rest of the music I develop in the interaction between the control of sound fabrics “weaving” (but the threads can change their color or matter anytime) and the freedom of improvisation, although sometimes guided by strict rules in the practice phases. Hence the polyphony results from a personal approach of the vertical/horizontal relation where 3D-like constructions of mutating patterns intermingle.
-You have spoken about your interest in mobiles (think Calder) and viewing perspectives. Does this idea of mobiles lead you to a more free approach in your music in terms of the individual moments, since the movement of mobiles is always unpredictable in its detail….. yet seems to have an overall effect that has significant consistency… like a waterfall and many other things in nature.
Yes, mobiles, the Tinguely sonic sculptures, Rothko or De Staël paintings… everything that inspires movement may inspire me! Mathematically speaking, the movements of a mobile are predictable. But when looking at them without knowing the equations ruling the rotations, air streams, gravitation… it’s mysterious! Even more interesting for me recently are the shadows produced by the mobiles… it’s more mysterious but just as predictable mathematically speaking. When I studied sound engineering for cinema, I had great classes in optics, like for camera focus and positioning etc. Diffraction, reflections, axis divisions… I think I have a sort of an amateur scientist mind, and I’ve always been interested in the movements of nature… in chemistry or biology too… the Golden Section for instance is a filtering tool used for a certain observation of nature, there are many others, like fractal mathematics which I’ve always been fascinated by. But I think, more than nature, the genial concept of imaginary numbers I first studied in high school has given me the most matter for thinking about form. Years later, I realized Mandelbrot was using imaginary numbers to conceptualize the fractal functions that – if you introducing perturbation phenomena in it - can incredibly imitate renderings of nature. Something I learned more recently is how Fractal Functions can sit in 2 D, or in 3 D, but also a 3.3D, 1.2D, or 9D dimension !!! I think that’s what I’m trying to do in music hahaha, although 9D for me is of course too abstract to even imagine something such as that.
I do feel absolutely free in music – may the music be totally improvised (like when I play with Ambitronix or with Evan Parker), quite pre-organized, or anticipated by the sound of a composition… there are just different levels of focus at play, and the relation between conscious/unconscious related to knowledge or practice may vary a lot. In improvised music, there are amazing moments where forms work together at the group level. It’s evidently not by chance, hence it’s by a common thread of trust and experience in creating spontaneous forms. The same may apply when there is pre-rehearsed material at play, but some but not too many anticipated rules as far as I’m concerned! This is the reason why the music I write rarely has chord changes to it, the harmony being the consequence of movement strategies. Freedom is a necessary process as for the ear attitude as well as for the ear altitude.
-Are you influenced by the sound of Balafon, Mbira and West African percussion in your prepared piano work or are you simply looking for completely new sonorities… or both?
Of course! Drummers! Percussionists! Singers! Masters of the phase! Steve Argüelles and the drummer of my trio, Emile Biayenda, are both very strong influences – speaking of drummers I work with since ages. Emile’s outstanding drumming comes from his Congolese (the Pool area) village traditions plus the Rumba he has adapted to the drumset. Wizard-like Steve has always worked with oral traditions originating musicians such as Dudu Pukwana and Omar Sosa and I learned another whole lot from him too. I do play some drums, my hero as a teenager was Ed Blackwell and I’m so glad I’ve seen Kenny Clark play once.
Preparing the piano means modify the impact and resonance that’s following the piano hammering the string(s). It is percussion. So, depending on what matters I place between the strings, the sonic rendering may recall the mbira or balafon and so many ancestral instruments. Since I use organic matters such as wood (mainly!) and rubber, and I press down old school pins into some wood sticks so they rattle a certain way. There is definitely a connection to the instruments you list. The wood bits I place are not machined, they’re curved by me, by hand… just like the instruments you list above. But when it comes to the knowledge of these instruments… I am not a scholar at all in Sub-Saharan music. I’m just doing my thing and my love of these outstanding orally transmitted musics and instruments have played an important role in my evolution.
-Are there Pygmy music (cycles/variable ostinato) ….and Gamelan music sources (timbres) in your recent music (either through osmosis or consciously)?
Aka and Baka Pygmy music, yes. In the early nineties I did transcribe quite a few Ocora recordings that led me to notate the rhythm of the language in my own way. As for Gamelan music, I enjoy it, but I never studied it. Some sounds I use at the prepared piano may remind those of Gamelan music, but it’s a sonic connection only. More generally speaking, the Ocora record collection of world music by Radio France has had a major impact on me. In 1990 I met and started to play drummer Steve Argüelles and in 1994 I toured Sub-Saharan Africa with Emile Biayenda. Both now live in France: they’re about to work as a duo actually. I so look forward to hearing where they’re at with their project!
-You talk about not presenting your emotions through your music (but rather leaving that up to the listener). Your music is rather pure, to be interpreted individually (from a listening perspective). Some of the music that I perceive to be connected to your music, like some of the African and Balinese are often ceremonial or directly connected to social events, traditions and gatherings. First of all is my assessment of your music fair… and… how do you reconcile those differences in purpose and intent… or is there anything to be reconciled…? Is it a European (Western) paradigm vs an African or South (-East) Asian paradigm?... or…?
Well… it’s a vast question. As you know I have been very interested in the idea of the imaginary folklore dear to Bela Bartok – still this is a subject to be discussed in other circumstances for it was not so imaginary after all, because he based himself a lot on existing folklores. Also the idea of “Imaginary Lanscapes” dear to Cage was tickling me a lot.
I grew up like any young petite bourgeoisie guy in a Paris suburban town, there was no internet of course, only radio (and there were amazing music programs), some TV (but good music on TV was very rare) and some concerts too, I was studying the classical piano thing (although I never was passionate about classical then). My sister, who is six years older, was very gifted for classical piano and, later flute. I think I may have had to find my own direction because of this and the pop and soul scene I felt attracted to (from Talking Heads to Stevie Wonder)…
My encounter with jazz was not a complete coincidence because of my dad's records and also because Paris was a central point in the international jazz circuit, but I remember it sort of took me by surprise… my teen friends were like “what are you doing ?” when I said I’d go home practice at the piano. Or go see Sun Ra and his Arkestra !!! But – like Lacy used to say – I had already "heard the call".
It’s interesting to note that the French revolution had severely banished and aborted almost 100% of the regional traditions in music, and I didn’t grow up within any ancestral/regional tradition besides church music. That might be the reason why I started to think “well maybe I can find my own fictional tradition”. How ambitious – and arrogant! - is that…
I don’t think I realized at all the crazy ambition it was, hahaha, but that’s what got me going into my own stuff, warmly encouraged by mentors Mal Waldron and composer David Lacroix who told me seek my own ideas, both around 1983-4. Actually, it’s Mal who first said to me “You should do this with your music.” after I played him a cassette with an odd version of Round About Midnight with a few prepared sounds I had recorded at my parents, and a pretty openly sourced approach to the changes! Mal listened and said to me “I really like this, Benoît. But if you play this tune, you got to play the composition, for… it’s a composition, with lots of leading voices etc. Don’t bother so much with the re-harmonization fashion and all that. Write your own music with your ideas, next time I’m in town bring me something of your own. And when you play some Monk, study it and play it your way then, but stick to the very composition”.
Now…to the point… making music for me is a totally emotional process! And when I play, I enter a sort of ceremonial trance or meditation – if that may be an answer to your other question above re: ceremonial. I have a strong relation to ceremonial in music, but it doesn’t belong to a religion nor a religious dogma – anyway, I quit roman catholic dogma for good – never liked it - when aged 13 or so, a great move. Ceremonial... it’s the process of having the mind and body meet in one aim: music. I may enter some very unique altered states, like in certain ceremonies probably. And there's is definitely a high level of meditation involved, especially playing solo, when your attention is not primarily focused on making the others sound as good as you can – a form of meditation too.
But when I write music, I just tend to not put myself in a particular emotional state. I look for forms, colors etc. and the half conscious half instinctive assembling of these will necessarily create a particular sound, feel, therefore… emotion ? that’s when the composition will become an incarnated therefore living sound. But… I’m talking about an emotion that doesn’t have a name yet! This is what I like best in music – listening or playing, when it gives me emotions I didn’t know. I mean, how can I convene an emotion I don’t know yet? In my approach, I conceive things in order to get the listener to convene their own emotions – whatever the name may be given to them later on! In that sense, I am not a romantic era musician. Emotions are as numerous as there are chemistry or genetics options… I’d find it pretentious if I’d flag a particular work with pre-known emotions. Now, after all, no one hears the same in music, am I wrong? Maybe I am wrong – who cares, I’m just a searcher.
-I feel a connection in your work to Ligeti in terms of attitude and process; you more heavily connected to an improvisatory impulse, but still. Conceptual, “graphic”, game-like. Could you talk to this issue?
Oh yes, György Ligeti, of course. Composer and former copyist David Lacroix who happens to be my older sister’s partner since my teens, is totally responsible for getting me into Ligeti when I was 15! Together we would attend the Ensemble Intercontemporain series at Pompidou Centre in Paris. The Passacaglia Hungarese for harpsichord had tickled my deepest interest and I was trying to play a piano/synth version of it (two keyboards are required) when aged 16 or so… but… when the Etudes pour Piano by Ligeti were published and premiered in 1985, it felt like a major upheaval for me. I already knew lots of Ligeti works including “Momentum” and “Selbstportrait” as recorded by the Kontarsky brother – superb works for two pianos with incredible phase phenomenon… I luckily got myself the Etudes at the Schott store in London – the first book, the facsimilé edition ! - and started to study it. I didn’t have the technical level to play them all well (still don’t!), but I studied them and, in a way, observed the constructions like through a magnifying glass, improvised a lot on the ideas. Because of these Etudes I opted to go to piano school again and graduated (the French equivalent) a couple of years later. I started to seriously work on sight-reading music as I was pathetic at it. I felt I had to play this music and concepts just as much as I was involved in jazz and improvisation, I didn’t feel a particular hierarchy you know... Yes, Ligeti was conceptual and game-like (jazz is too!) and not only his attitudes towards music have crafted major beauties, but he has simply extended the possibilities of music. The good fortune later was to meet him in 1998 for an hour interview we did together with jazz writer Stéphane Olivier, for Jazz Magazine. It was great to share with him such a sincere love he had for jazz, afro-cuban and latin american, pygmy and subsahara music and so on. Since he had heard a couple of tracks of mine, he encouraged me to keep going my way. I dedicated him a tune called “Bogolan” (name given to traditional handmade fabrics from Mali) in 1999 and we later exchanged a few messages, never directly on his side, but I got short messages from him through his secretary.
- What does Jazz mean to you? Do you see yourself as a jazz musician…at all.. a little bit... or…
Jazz is a such a powerful expression of freedom. Jazz was born in consequence and amidst the extreme sufferings and segregation of millions of people whose destiny options have been stolen – looking at today, it sadly still goes on, differently, but it still goes. Not only in the US, of course. Jazz has been a reaction to violence by a badly segregated community, then several communities joined in the momenta. The history of this music does not result of some King or Pope support or anything like that. Opposite. It's "Something Else!".
Jazz represents for me a claim for an equal system that’s banning the idea of hate and contempt. It’s a most beautiful human history. I feel I belong to this family since it’s resonated in me for such a long time. It’s become a very large family, worldwide, with different aesthetics and epicenters… I love its legacy so much. I am fascinated by its evolution, its prolific ramifications… Ligeti btw had told me “Jazz is the very first multi-cultural expression in music, isn’t it?”. He was right. In the middle ages, European musicians were travelling and met/exchanged with other practices too, but the inertia of the influence spread took hundreds of years to radiate… until music got written and travel modes improved etc. Jazz in a single century has developed like a magical sequoia-like tree with beautiful fruits of all kinds and all colors! There’s some jazz today that I don’t relate to – but it’s only a question of taste.
I found in jazz, I think, a branch of the arts that express freedom in its most chiseled way, it’s most independent way. Plus, it’s a collective music, an equal system within a small band, I think – I mean that’s what I believe in. Collective. I mean it. My solo approach at the piano is the product of my collaborations.
-The meaning of tradition to you?
Tradition is a great thing but a great thing to be concerned about too. What I mean is that when an art becomes a constellation of habits that won’t change anymore, and therefore stops its evolution, I’m not as interested. Since art thrusts sparkle at a certain moment of a certain human group life, it belongs to its time, I think. And shows the way for the future artists too. Art is a way to honor, through creativity, the fact of being alive and I don’t see the point in trying to reproduce something of the past as if it were the very truth or something. Especially when the practice is in eternal motion, like Jazz is! Or then it becomes like written music – that’s totally ok with me, but it becomes a total different thing than an evolving creative music. Once again, recycling is more creative than celebrating or copying or cloning. How to celebrate Louis Armstrong ? I would just shut up and play his records loud with windows wide open to the outside of the street – should do that more often ! There is this trend in the US to over celebrate “American classical music”, I think. It’s a complex debate. Once the inventors of different styles are gone, the style cannot be played with such strength and relevance, I think, there can never be the same thrust or pyrotechnics that made the floors and walls vibrate a special way. Everyone is free to do what they want, but I’m always skeptical when I hear younger players trying to play their mythology of the very Bud Powell style… I hear something that doesn’t work – but that’s just my feeling of course.
Another story with Mal Waldron. In 1989 or so, I had an offer from BMG France to record a trio record. The producer who produced some of Lacy’s records at that time said to me “What if we worked on a Homage to Monk record?”. I had not released anything yet under my own name, I was only 22 or 23, but soon after this offer, Mal came in town. So I asked him for advice. And he said “If you wish to pay homage to Monk, well the thing he would have liked is that you record your own music. There is no better way to pay tribute to Monk than to make your own thing.” I think Mal’s views of course have stayed as a definite intake. I actually said to the BMG guy “let’s do something with my compositions!”, and I never heard from him again.
Now, the knowledge and understanding of traditions in music is of course most important to become a pertinent artist, at many levels. I still playfully study bebop improvisation for instance – it may surprise a number of people reading this, but, yeah, it’s a wonderful game to play and so many creative strategies can be imagined… it’s a different axis of practice to keep my mind alert, but I would never record a be-bop record, it doesn’t make sense to me. Now, one may hear the presence of bebop in my playing, there is something there, obviously. Like a memory of it, and that’s on purpose, I like to play games with the memory of the listener a lot. Also, I always relax about my views and geography of the keyboard when I switch to playing/reading some Scarlatti or Bach etc. And I learn a lot from my peers, too, all instruments. I think there is a way to create your own little tradition – that’s how one should find his/her voice, isn’t it?
-Your greatest personal influence?
One can never say enough how much one’s peers and artists, family, friends or mentors are personal influences, as much as the sum of the magnificent amount of art preceding us or at play today.
-Central artist in 20thand 21stcentury.
Oh well ! 20th… Billie Holiday
21st …Pierre Soulages
-Is there a French tendency/language in music? If so, do you see your music as French?
Mmm… I really don’t see my music as French, really. Nevertheless, my maternal language is French. And French classical music, poetry, literature, art, cuisine…they’ve been around maybe more than if I had grown up in another country, who knows… Impressionism, too… I grew up in Bougival, the city where Monet, Renoir, Morisot (…) had first conceived their impressionist approach, it’s located on a hill above the Seine valley. We had lots of reproductions of paintings in the classrooms at primary school. My grandfather himself was a painter and had supported impressionism at a time when it was still struggling to gain recognition… Later, the Monet waterlilies have been a strong print on me when it comes to freedom in art, Monet was diving into abstraction! We kids felt these masters were like our grandparents who had lived down our street. I was born in the same town as Debussy, but I don’t remember anyone telling me about it when I was a child… I don’t remember so well, but it seemed that… Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc, Fauré… their music was always somehow around at home. Less present than sacred vocal music in the living room for sure, but still. These composers’ rhythmicity fell natural to me. Way beyond the fact of being French, I think, Debussy has definitely brought major innovations in music by breaking the hierarchy of time signature in music, for instance (just like music in the middle ages had no bars but followed the language, sometimes several different languages were sung simultaneously). It was a parallel movement to poetry, abolishing traditions of classical forms and homo-rhythmicity. It might well have been a subliminal influence, but… I spent so much more time studying the jazz gems, you know...
I studied music analysis and counterpoint with Solange Ancona for two years at the Versailles Conservatory, who herself had been a student of Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire. She had been part of the Darmstadt scene too, with Stockhausen, Ligeti, Boulez... Messiaen has been a central figure in the French classical music life for decades, he also taught a big lot. None of his students have composed music that sound like his. The reason is he would not have agreed, for he was so demanding to his students they go their own way. Grisey, Levinas, Boulez, Benjamin, Xenakis, Stockhausen, Ancona... to name a few… the list of Messiaen’s students is jaw dropping, and they all did something of their own. Messiaen also helped revitalize the interest for the French late medieval music, like Guillaume de Machaut, Pérotin… My teacher Solange was constantly quoting Messiaen’s words at her class. I had discovered Messiaen a little earlier (I remember my whole family and myself listened to the live radio broadcast of the St François d’Assises 1983 premiere!), and I especially enjoyed piano works I found particularly mysterious. Visions de l’Amen (for two pianos) is extraordinary, so is “Modes de valeurs et intensités” or “Catalogue des Oiseaux”. But I never did study his composition techniques in deep so much. I mean, I did spend quite some time observing for sure, and read some of his writings. There is a strong trend today in using Messiaen’s ideas to the letter, especially his modal increments but… well… maybe he wouldn’t have been so happy about it, for he encouraged composers to find their own tools you know… I think they worked beautifully for his own music, for in his music they’re used as a lever you cannot dissociate from other major parameters used in his own paradigma, in order to craft his own sound. I find it always dangerous to absorb/memorize and use ideas you haven’t invented or partly invented… one needs to recycle predecessors’ ideas, approach them with a different angle, change the axis or… the optical lens… now this said, there might very well be a print of Messiaen’s works on me, they’re a real presence for sure… but Solange had given me this advice too, think twice before using something you haven’t invented. Don’t know if that’s French or not - Solange Ancona was of Italian descent anyway!
I am fluent in English since my early teens. I was lucky enough to spend two years in the British Section of Lycée International, consequently I was hanging with Americans, Danish, Dutch, Argentinians etc and I did enjoy the – difficult! - experience of acting some as part of the English theatre workshop. English is an everyday language and read for me. Where I grew up, some of my neighbors were German, Dutch, Danish, Persian… I was curious with sounds and forms in language. Later I found interest in linguistics, Jakobson, Saussure, Sapir… I often improvise on books, on English language novels or poetry mostly, then some French and some Spanish. On essays too. English has a rhythmic behavior I’ve always loved. It has had a strong print on me, I think. All kinds of English, of course, and regional or social groups accentuation or slang. The rhythmicity, syntax/grammar and – most important – accents of any language have acquired their own specifics from earlier generations, still they’re changing constantly. And I do like to have a close look at these specifics. It’s led me to conceive my own lingual/labial notation, that I use for composing. A simple tool to craft my lines and ideas that’s not using the regular western music notation system. That’s not keeping the flame of “French culture” so much, I’m afraid!
Very recently I had a discussion about your question “do you see your music as French?” with my brother-in-law composer David Lacroix. He’s first seen me perform in Alan Silva’s IACP workshop when I was 16. He’s seen all the steps of my evolution, nobody but him knows so much about my musical journey. I was telling him I had no idea about this “do you see your music as French?” and didn’t know what to reply to this question. He had a big laugh “of course your work has something very French! One finds it in a sense of details that one finds through the whole history of French music starting in medieval times !!!”. I was speechless. But you know what, I don’t think I’ve ever thought about this before, my work being “French”, since I’ve placed myself in search of an imaginary folklore. Now… it’s true I love details in music, anyway… obviously details are so central in what contributes to craft art. There are so many details in Charlie Parker’s playing that I could spend a whole scholarly new life studying them thoroughly.
A couple years ago when I read in a (French) festival program “Benoît Delbecq, France’s most American French jazz pianist”, I couldn’t believe how imbecile this statement was. I’ve never studied nor lived in the US and never tried to sound like “an American”! Sure I studied and practiced a lot jazz, and I happen to have regular collaborations with fabulous US musicians, but… so what… this doesn’t make me a “most American blablabla”… now I certainly have the physical experience of sound and time feel shared with some of the greatest New York based players I work with, and this is definitely something you learn to identify and integrate physically. There is a player-to-player transmission of a certain physical thrust in sound, just like I have experienced it with Emile Biayenda (who is Congolese) or Steve Argüelles (who is English-Spanish-Catalan) when I first played with Emile in Africa and with Steve at the Banff Workshop.
Nevertheless as a person I can’t help it but be totally French hahaha, you can’t take away from me that wine and cheese and literature/poetry (poultry/poetry as we like to say with Andy Milne), but a French who has been offered millions of gifts and views and sentiments from outside the French borders, you see… Evidently music and art has no borders, that’s a fact no politics can steal from us artists ever…so when it comes to art, I don’t even think I’m French at all. Never claimed it or whatever. My family fief faces the white cliffs of Dover, England – I might very well be of English or Scandinavian descent who settled to Flandres who knows. My DNA read could be quite surprising by the way! There is something I feel great about when I’m in the North of France, Holland or Belgium, Scandinavia, UK, Ireland…the North Sea… something talks or tickles me a nice way. My two parents are from Lille. But did I use these geographical/geological/nature sensations in the crafting of my work? I don’t think so. If so, it'd be not consciously for sure.
I’ve never ever performed any Debussy nor Ravel in public you know. With the Recyclers we did perform a few Poulenc melodies with singer Philippe Katerine, I also performed a Messiaen piece when I happened to be an actor as well as a pianist in a show back in 1989… but I am not at all a classical pianist as some think I am. My classical piano education as a child was just 4-5 years, from 6 to 10-ish. I usually don’t perform written music, only at very rare exceptions like dance shows or theatre, when there is a justification to it. For it’s a different discipline and odissey, I can observe that with my 18 year-old son who is totally dedicated to the cello repertoire. He’s at a very high level in the seraglio of the cello literature and that’s not at all where I stand or come from. You know, I’d love to be able to play Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit well – but it would take me another lifetime to start again with the right education in order to render it beautifully. It’s such beautiful music that was invented by a French, ok… but back in Debussy's era, nationalism and racism was way worse in France than it is today, and he had a lot of dark and shameful things to say about “La France”… a dark era besides great music… but as for myself, that’s not at all how I ever felt, and I certainly never ever thought about claiming any kind of French musical passport, you see... If my name were Ben Van Beck (a Flandres version of my name) would people ask me about my music being Flamish ? I don’t know… my mum was born 100 meters from the Belgian border… I’m “almost” a Belgian! Anyway, as an artist, I don’t feel any nation thing in me, I really don’t. My friends in music are simply my sisters and brothers, wherever they’re from.
-What impact does visual arts, dance, poetry, literature, cinema etc have on your music….are they sources of inspiration?
They all are, totally. I think that, form wise, idea wise, drama wise, I am more inspired by all other arts than music itself, I mean, when I compose ! - that’s where I find inspiration for the conception and construction of my work. I like to displace my attention from music to other art forms, because it makes me look at my work with a fresh approach, hopefully. Architecture etc… music is the architecture of time at all levels. I like to look at all kinds of architecture, engineering, nature... We’re under Covid curfew etc. Not seen a theatre or dance show, a film in the theater, a gig, a museum… in months… it is totally insane and unconceivable to live without all these arts. I’m doing my best to stay me and my family in good form for the future.
-If you could whom would you chose to have dinner with from “the other side”...
Oh, certainly Ornette Coleman! I’ve had the privilege to see Ornette play many times, but besides exchanging a few words when Kartet played a double bill with Prime Time I never dared taking a chance to have a real conversation with him. Dinner sounds great.
-Three unsung heroes
Any women composer of the past whose scores have vanished or have been destroyed.
Any medic in urgency mode.
Any fighter for peace/justice.
-Greatest personal artistic triumph/achievement
Providing a decent living for me and my family with my own body and mind and soul, no patron, no orders received nor given.