Can a sound contain historical truth? Or is history, as a recorded sound, a mere convention?

I don’t consider sound related to history… because I prefer leaving this to historians. I’m not a sociologist because it isn’t my profession, I’m not a psychologist but simply a sensible person, that works with intuition. Through intuition I record some significative things, not for the specialist but for me and for many others listeners.

You once mentioned in an interview that songs don’t interest you a lot, that you trust a spoken voice, not a singing one. What is the difference?

No, it’s false (laughs). There’s a big difference between the two, in particular because of what a voice can carry. In a radio you can read, on a stage you’ll have to remember. My point of view is that a voice has to be spontaneous, it always has to improvise. When I use a voice in one of my works I try to use words besides the sound, for what they mean.

Olivier Messiaen: Et Expecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum, 1965

You are a composer that has produced television documentaries about other major composers (in particular about the music reheasal process by Olivier Messiaen) and your ‘Cycle des Souvenirs‘ exhibition was hosted in Marseilles. Are these an important part of your working process as a composer?

I’m normally interested in listening. During all my experiences I’ve learnt how to listen well. I’m capable of listening professionally; but I also keep my eyes wide open, for everything that is visual. I’m impassioned, in an instictive way, of everything that is visual and I love combining the two things, sound and vision. I love working with pure sound and I also love working with images. This is why I don’t have any problem thinking of the two things in a relationship… and a non relationship. I can compose images as I compose music even if I’m not a image professional. I have the freedom to present images that I find interesting, with the freedom of an amateur and not of a professional.

Tonight you’re performing in a club with Erik M. How do you personally relate to the contemporary music and experimental scene? What do you enjoy listening to?

I like listening to different things and I receive many albums. There are works from the new generations that I like and some that I don’t. What interests me is how things are repeated, how the contemporary electronic scene has relations with the Concrete musique of the fifties. I find working with young musicians very interesting because today they have the possibility to improvise; for us, back then, it was impossible.

Many thanks go to Carla Chiti, Marco Biaggi and Nicola Guiducci. And many thanks obviously go to Luc and Brunhild Meyer-Ferrari for their patience and their kind attainability.