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.

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.

duo with frédérique bruyas

Frédérique Bruyas likes to present herself as a public reader. She conceives reading aloud as an art of written words whose object is literature in its variety and vitality. She sees each text as a score of words and each reading as a staging of literary works. In duet with Pierrejean (among other musicians), they arouse a singular pleasure that places the listener at the frontiers of sound and meaning, widening the field of possible interpretations of the text and the musical work. Their various programmes cover worlds as diverse as the noir novel (texts by Jonquet, Malte, Vargas, Manchette, Pouy…), or contemporary poetry (Kerouac, Luca, Rebotier, Tarkos…). Lurking in the shadow of words, the guitarist improvises around themes from his musical universe.

Political and phonetic

His work around fables, as well as his numerous readings-concerts with Frédérique Bruyas, convinced the guitarist that there is music specific to words. Also, like any instrument, each of us has a unique vocal identity, a kind of sound signature that reflects our fingerprints. It is defined by timbre, intonation, articulation, flow… Also, the language used and the accent offer specific “musical” colours. To continue his work on this musical material, Pierrejean sometimes likes to hijack documents gleaned here and there on the Internet. In fact, political oratory games are an ideal playground for him.

The trance of the words

With Frédérique Bruyas, or on the diverted videos (political and phonetic), the guitarist is dependent on a text with an imposed diction. The opposite is true here. The text exists, but it is he who follows the music. In fact, like an opera singer, the “vocalist” interprets a vocal score (sometimes close to the Sprechgesang) which must be based on the instruments. The Les Fables project has known these two approaches: the disc was conceived around the voice (free recitatives a capella), but its scenic version (Fabulatorz) has known the opposite constraint since the reciter had to recite the texts in the same way in order to fit in with the group.

damien jourdan

We lived a few miles apart without knowing it. We finally meet at a mutual friend’s house and exchange our records. Seduced by his universe, I express my desire to work on his new songs. Damien writes his lyrics and music, sometimes close to Bashung or Dominique A. Seduced in turn by my arrangements, he entrusted me with the keys of his new album (after Nicolas Repac for the previous one). “Je regarde le ciel” was released in 2017 and the adventure continues on stage as a quartet.

benoît renard

Another example of an improbable encounter between two ex-parisians. Also residing on Grignan for several years, the director (and pianist) Benoît Renard approached me one day and said to me: “the first concert I saw at 15 years old was with your band”. Friendship and mutual esteem for our work, one thing leading to another, Benoît dresses my recent projects with magnificent images. On the other hand, I make a few notes on his films as soon as the opportunity arises.

Recent adventures (2018)

• 2018 was a year rich in writing. While writing my repertoire Satie for Bourg en Bresse, the Drôme director Jean-François Cousin commissioned me to write the music for his show “Folles tribulations pour un coeur volé”. A kind of open-air burlesque enchantment, mixing a hundred actors, dancers, singers and who moved several thousand spectators during a week in Allan (26) in July.

• This year also marks my reunion with the contemporary music composer Nicolas Frize, with whom I had already worked a lot in the past. It was as part of its creation Elle s’écoule la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme de St Denis (June).

• Soloist invited by the symphony orchestra of the Conservatoire de Montélimar (conducted by Stéphane Cortial) as part of the Orchestral Jam program, with trumpeter Hervé Salamone among others. Guest speaker at the Philharmonie de Paris during the Zappa Weekend in September.

And less recent

• Conçoit la partie musicale de deux créations avec la compagnie Oiseau Tonnerre de Jean-Claude Tessier (danse et poésie). La première “Voix off”, au Cambodge (2011) avec des musiciens khmers de Cambodian Living Arts. La seconde aux Mines de Bruoux (2012).

• Commande du Conseil général de la Drôme autour des musiques de cartoons (2012) pour l’Orchestre d’Harmonie de la Drôme.

• A composé-enregistré des musiques pour le chorégraphe Andy Degroat, le Théatre de l’Unité avec Jacques Livchine et Hervée de Lafond.

• Invited on CD and in concerts by percussionists Jean-Luc Rimey-Meille and Sébastien Bonniau to listen to King Crimson’s music (2012). Concerts in Holland (2008) with the “Zappaien” group Cuccurullo Brillo Brullo. Earlier, concerts with singer-guitarist Karim Albert Kook, singer Mamia Chérif. Duo concerts with vibraphonists Jacques Marugg, Arnaud Devos or Benoit Moerlen. Other collaborations are mentioned on various pages of the site depending on the theme.