Here you’ll find all the information about the ZAPPE SATIE project, which is currently on the air (2025 will mark the centenary of the composer’s death). 2 albums released to date: the CD “Zappe Satie” (2021) and an EP “Satinédits” (digital only) in 2023. Please contact us at assomusiclip@gmail.com

Listen to the new EP “Satinédits” on Souncloud
Listen to the CD “Zappe Satie” on Souncloud

genesis and artistic approach

After many residencies focused on Zappa and pop, I wanted to start with a repertoire from a composer of the early 20th century that could be a bridge to today’s music. Erik Satie quickly established himself, especially since he entered the public domain in 2010. A great opportunity to play around his musical universe and take him on other paths.

Why Satie ?

It would be a mistake to confine Satie to the role of father of ambient music. And if we want to go beyond his hits (Gymnopédies, Gnossiennes), we discover little known, surprising and innovative pieces. This musician with his unusual work, offbeat in his time, has always had the attentive ear of jazz and pop musicians. Logical if we admit that his writing often uses elements common in contemporary music, especially rather short titles such as songs, with small repeated cadences. And his self-taughtness (at least in the beginning) forced him to develop a world devoid of the dogmas and virtuosity of the time, like many musicians today.

How do we get Satie back?
Rather than just take Satie back to the letter, I preferred to draw on her theme to build a kind of kaleidoscope of her work (as in the Zappe Zappa project). It is up to the public to locate the pieces of this puzzle through the scores, interpreted by variable geometry orchestral formulas, mixing “classical” and “electric” instruments. My work in progress is currently divided between various pieces, first orchestrated for large groups before being adapted for small ensembles. These range from arrangements that are fairly faithful to the original score, to versions that move further away from it and become variations of it. Others are new tracks, mixing or superimposing various musical fragments from such or such pieces, a bit like a remix.

variations on the project – cultural actions

This project takes several forms, both artistic and educational.

1) In concert with a 5tet (see musicians in “history”) who will perform the entire repertoire from the record, in a more open form. Duration approx. 1h30. Also possible as a duo or trio (please specify).

2) Music lectures. These are aimed at various types of venue (libraries-media libraries, secondary schools, nursing homes, etc.) and last around 1 hour. Guitar in hand and accompanied by audio-video extracts, I fly over the world of Erik Satie and explain how I have reappropriated his repertoire to bring it closer to jazz and pop. This event is aimed at the general public as well as musicians.

3) Teaching residencies. Collective work on the “Zappe Satie” repertoire
(a one-off masterclass, a course lasting a few days, a season-long residency) in artistic education establishments such as conservatoires, Fneijma schools, Pôle Sup, universities, etc. The aim is to help musicians with classical and contemporary music backgrounds discover how to approach the musical universe of a composer (Erik Satie in this case) and revisit it creatively. The aim is also to enable them to combine their aesthetics around a common project. (Target audience: professional and amateur musicians – end of second cycle minimum)

More informations on Résidencies.

Album available on CD digipack and on all download platforms.
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les étincelles hurlantes

After my work on the “son des bols”, which was a little intimate, I had the opportunity to work here on a more sonorous material, which allows me to enrich my palette towards something more intense, sometimes more violent. And unlike ceramics, which only resonates once out of the oven, my friend Julien Allegre‘s sculptures already resonate in their raw state, even before the sheet metal is shaped and machined.

When I recorded him in his studio, I discovered that his works were born in a sparkle burst, with noises of twisting, hammering, grinding… That’s all that I tried to restore in this disc. I also find in his work an approach close to mine: he assembles, associates and juxtaposes various elements thanks to welding, as I do with audio editing.

His sculptures are the fruit of fire and fusion, but they can also have the appearance of tenderness or rest, which has also allowed me to design calmer tracks as the disc progresses. And then Julien being also a drummer-percussionist, he offered me his musical gesture in addition to the sounds from his work. And once again, my director friend Benoît Renard has transcended this new sound adventure with his magnificent images.

le son des bols

The first time I entered Mireille Favergeon‘s gallery, I had to resist the urge to have her bowls ring. Obviously, his ceramic universe reveals only part of his magic if you only admire it with your eyes. Having become friends over time, I spent a day at her house recording a large part of her pieces. This sound material brought back to my home, I discovered the richness (which I already suspected) of the instrumentarium that it beat as it was being cooked. Each piece, in addition to its size, shape and email, has a unique sound identity.

Then begins a long work consisting in classifying them into families: low, high, resonant, resonant, dry, pure… Then an observation: a ceramic is a percussive instrument, but which can continue to live in a magical way after being struck. Since music is based on the organization of sounds and time, all I had to do was marry these bowls, these vases, to compose the little “sound miniatures” that you hear while your eyes see.

Except for my guitar at a few moments (I had to associate my primary instrument with it), all the other sounds come from ceramics, most often left in their natural state, but sometimes deformed, diverted, as if to better penetrate the material that composes them. The images of director Benoît Renard illustrate this whole process.