You turned on the radio and heard all kinds of things.
— Luc Ferrari
When the Domaine Musical started up, I wasn't part of it. They were the major players in contemporary music at that time, braodcasting old and new composers' work. And I wasn't one of them.
My sisters were going out with artists and poets, and eventually it was the creative world which attracted me.
I think I came across Cecil Taylor a bit later, in 65 or 66. That really impressed me - Cecil Taylor is an amazing character... Both his music and the way he approaches the instrument are astonishing.
Electronic music used pure sounds, completely calibrated. You had to think digitally, as it were, in a way that allowed you to extend serial ideas into other parameters through technology.
With the piano I'm completely in control of the gestural situation-not that I'm going to play the piece myself, but I know what's difficult, what's impossible.
Well, first I studied piano. I wasn't very satisfied because I though my teachers were dumb... and repressive.
I was born in Paris, and I haven't moved, except until now - I live in the suburbs and I hate it.
I probably went to musique concrete concerts - though not the very first ones - at the beginning of the 50s.
Boulez seemed to me to be a guy who wrote laws. Like a company lawyer.
Whereas Schaeffer and Henry were working like samplers, their idea was to capture those sounds which couldn't be serially calibrated because they were too complex in character.
So the ideology was that: use sounds as instruments, as sounds on tape, without the causality. It was no longer a clarinet or a spring or a piano, but a sound with a form, a development, a life of its own.
I wanted to play piano, and that slid quickly into writing - it wasn't enough to play other people's notes: I had to write notes too.
I have problems with machines which aren't gestural.
