Baudouin de Jaer (Be)

1 November 2019 City Sonic

I write what I listen (conference / listening shares)

“I grew up in Waterloo, not far from Braine and took classes at Cardinal Mercier school, and my childhood home was full of sonatas, cantatas, and passion for the great Bach. But how come my brother and I used to turn the metal trash cans upside down to amplify them with echo chambers, sculptures of my first twelve-tone series? Why did I dream of ‘blocophones’, of concerto for crackling wood, while slowly deciphering Bach’s chorales on the piano?

Construction of sonic boxes, obscuring of the entire Royal Conservatory of Liège, decoding of Adolf Wölfli’s drawings in 2010, impossible pieces for the Korean Geomungo, 7 years of solfège in 7′, composition for Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Liège, collage of 50 compositions of 15” by people who have never composed music, University of the Arts open to all in the North of Brussels, the orchestras of a day, paper oracles to feel lighter, sonata for violin on the top of the violin, Lion Dance composition for the National Orchestra of South Korea, string quartet for 4 non-violinists… these are a few examples of what has marked my passion in this musical journey, between the discovery of a violin at my grandfather’s in Tournai, and the chamber opera that was recently performed in Brussels: ‘what lives in us’. Baudouin de Jaer (composer, violinist).

Biography

Composer, violinist, Baudouin de Jaer studied composition with Philippe Boesmans, Henri Pousseur, Frederic Rzewski and in McGill University of Montreal with Bruce Mather. He is the initiator and co-founder of Back To Normal, Cirque des Sons, the Maison de la Création – cultural center of Brussels North, and since 2007, NOODIK productions tool of artistic productions. Since 2004, Baudouin de Jaer and choreographer Kyung-a Ryu have been working on different projects. He has increased his exchanges with South Korea, notably at the Music College of the National University of Seoul, at the National Gugakwon Center in Seoul, and composes for Korean instruments such as the Gayageum, Daegum and Geomungo as well as for the orchestra in traditional Korean instruments. In 2010, Baudouin de Jaer decrypts the musical scores of Adolf Wölfli. On this occasion, the Sub Rosa label which follows his production, released the book + CD Analyse des Cryptogrammes Musicaux, then in 2012 Gayageum Sanjo and in 2013, Goemungo and Gayaguem, compositions for traditional Korean instrument.