Pascal Dusapin
In 2006, when the Collège de France chose Pascal Dusapin for the artistic creation chair, the oldest French institution of knowledge honoured a personality from the French music world. The density, regularity and richness of his activity as a composer astonishes, surprises, impresses, in France and worldwide. Since the end of the 1970s, the former student of Iannis Xenakis has been exploring all the domains of composition - solo instrument, chamber music, the quartet, the chorus, orchestra, opera, oratorio... No form leaves him indifferent, no instrument, even the piano, for many years neglected. Another heavily visited field of affinity: voices, soloists or choruses. The Dusapin style encompasses the most expressive techniques and vocabulary. It is deployed in energy, in flow, with a definite lyricism and a beautiful plastic and sound quality, but it also can welcome pauses and gentle respiration. Pascal Dusapin very much likes literary, pictorial and philosophical references and he does not hesitate to include them in his compositions, using montages of early texts, work using the writers of modernity (Samuel Beckett, Gertrude Stein, Heiner Müller) or collaborations with contemporary authors, like his friend Olivier Cadiot, who wrote the libretto for the first of his six operas, Romeo & Juliet. Not abandoning either the achievements of a certain classicism or the advances of the avant-garde, Pascal Dusapin has built an independent body of work outside of the cliques. Besides Romeo & Juliet presented in 1989, he gave a concert at the Festival d'Avignon in 1994 in collaboration with the Centre Acanthes.
ADB, April 2010