Eliane Radigue
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Eliane Radigue (born January 24, 1932) is a French electronic music composer whose work, since the early 1970s, has been almost exclusively created on a single synthesizer, the ARP 2500 modular system and tape.
Raised in Paris by middle-class parents, she married the sculptor Arman with whom she lived in Nice while raising their three children. She had studied piano and was already composing before having heard a broadcast by the founder of musique concrete Pierre Schaeffer. She met him shortly thereafter in the early 50s, she became his student, and worked periodically during visits to Paris at the Studio d'Essai. During the early 1960s she was assistant to Pierre Henry, during which time she created some of the sounds which appeared in his work. As her work gained maturity, Schaeffer and Henry considered her use of microphone feedback and long tape loops contrary to their ideals, but her practice was still influenced heavily by their methods.
Around 1970, she created her first synthesizer-based music at NYU at a studio she shared with Laurie Spiegel on a Buchla synthesizer left by Morton Subotnick. Her goal by that point was to create a slow, purposeful "unfolding" of sound, which she felt to be closer to the minimal composers of New York at the time than to the French musique concrete composers who had been her previous allies. After presenting the first of her Adnos in 1974 at Mills College at the invitation of Terry Riley, a group of visiting French music students suggested that her music was deeply related to meditation and that she should look into Tibetan Buddhism, two things that she had very little familiarity with.
Upon investigation of Tibetan Buddhism, she quickly converted and spent the next three years devoted to its practice under her guru Pao Rinpoche, who subsequently sent her back to her musical work. She returned to composition, picking up where she left off, using the same methods and working toward the same goals as before, and finished Adnos II in 1979 and Adnos III in 1980. She dedicated much of the 80s to a three-hour work, perhaps her masterpiece, the Trilogie de la Mort, which was as heavily influenced by the Tibetan Book of the Dead and her meditation practice as by the death of Pao Rinpoche and her son Yves Arman. The first third of the Trilogie, Kyema, was her first release recording, issued by Phill Niblock's XI label.
Since then, she has created a number of works, including one sponsored by the French government, based on stories from the Buddhist tradition.
She joined laptop improvisation group The Lappetites and they released their first album "Before the Libretto" on the Quecksilber label in 2005. The Lappetites are Eliane Radigue, Kaffe Matthews, Ryoko Kuwajima, and Antye Greie, better known as AGF.
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[edit] Representative creations
- Chry-ptus New York Cultural Art Center, 1971
- 7th Birth New York, 1972
- Geelriandre Théatre de la Musique, Paris, 1972
- Phi 847 The Kitchen, New York, 1973
- Arthesis Theater Vanguard, Los Angeles, 1973
- Biogénésis and Transamorem Transmortem The Kitchen, New York, 1974
- Adnos Festival d'Automne, Paris, 1974
- 7 petites pièeces pour un Labyrinthe Sonore GERM, Paris, 1975
- Adnos II Mills College, Oakland, 1980
- Adnos III, Prélude à Milarepa, Experimental Intermedia Foundation, New York, 1982
- 5 songs of Milarepa San Francisco Art Institute, 1984
- Jetsun Mila, Vie de Milarepa, GERM, Paris, 1986
- Kyema New Langton Arts, San Francisco, 1988
- Kailasha Experimental Intermedia Foundation, New York, 1991
- Koume Mamac, Festival MANCA, Nice, 1993
The last three works constitutes the 3-part Trilogie de la Mort.
[edit] Discography
- Songs of Milarepa (single disc) (Lovely Music, 1983)
- Jetsun Mila (Lovely Music, 1987)
- Kyema, Intermediate States (Experimental Intermedia, 1992)
- Mila's Journey Inspired by a Dream (Lovely Music, 1992)
- Biogenesis (Metamkine, 1996)
- Trilogie de la Mort (Experimental Intermedia, 1998)
- Songs of Milarepa (two discs) (Lovely Music, 1998)
- E = A = B = A + B (2 x 7" limited edition) (Povertech Industries, 2000)
- Adnos I-III (Table of the Elements, 2002)
- Geelriandre / Arthesis (Fringes Archive, 2003)
- Elemental II (Records of Sleaze Art, 2004)
- L'île re-sonante (Shiin, 2005)
- Chry-ptus (Schoolmap, 2007)
The triple -CD Trilogie de la Mort includes Kyema. The two disc Songs of Milarepa includes Mila's Journey Inspired by a Dream .
[edit] With The Lappetites
- Before the Libretto (Quecksilber, 2005)
