The Turangalîla-Symphonie is the only symphony by Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992). It was written for an orchestra of large forces from 1946 to 1948 on a commission by Serge Koussevitzky for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Along with the Quatuor pour la fin du temps, the symphony is one of the composer's most notable works.
Yann Pierre Tiersen is a French Breton musician and composer. His musical career is split between studio recordings, music collaborations, and film soundtracks songwriting. His music incorporates a large variety of classical and contemporary instruments, primarily the electric guitar, the piano, synthesisers, and the violin, but he also includes instruments such as the melodica, xylophone, toy piano, harpsichord, piano accordion, and even a typewriter.
André Jolivet was a French composer. Known for his devotion to French culture and musical thought, Jolivet drew on his interest in acoustics and atonality, as well as both ancient and modern musical influences, particularly on instruments used in ancient times. He composed in a wide variety of forms for many different types of ensembles.
Gilles Tremblay, was a Canadian composer from Quebec.
Harmonium was a Quebec progressive rock band formed in 1972 in Montreal. It became one of the most well-known music bands in the province of Québec in the 1970s and continues to hold an iconic and influential status to this day.
Jean-Yves Malmasson is a French composer and conductor.
Si on avait besoin d'une cinquième saison, better known as Les cinq saisons, is the second studio album by Canadian progressive rock band Harmonium. It was released on April 15, 1975, in Canada by Celebration Records, a subsidiary of Quality Records. It was the band's second and final release for the label, as its contract ended in October 1975. Les cinq saisons was released in France via Gamma Records. PolyGram, which absorbed the interests of Quality Records, later reissued the album on various formats in several countries.
Les Retrouvailles is the fifth studio album by French musician Yann Tiersen. Released in 2005 through Ici, d'ailleurs... record label, it features a number of high-profile guest vocalists, both French and Anglophone alike: Christophe Miossec, Dominique A, Elizabeth Fraser, Jane Birkin, and Stuart Staples. As is customary with his albums, Tiersen showcases his multi-instrumental skills, which on the album encompasses the accordion, piano, mandolin, and harpsichord, among others.
On Tour is a live album by Yann Tiersen. It was originally released in 2006 and features songs from Tiersen's past albums as well as some previously unreleased compositions. The album is notable for having a different approach to Tiersen's musical style: the usual multi-instrumental ensemble was replaced with electric guitars and an ondes Martenot, giving the music a fresh rendition.
C'était ici is the second live album of French Avant-Garde musician and composer Yann Tiersen. It was recorded during three concerts performed on 15, 16, and 17 February 2002, at the Cité de la Musique in Paris, France. The album is noteworthy because of the many collaborators appearing in the performances such as the 35-member orchestral group Synaxis, conducted by Guillaume Bourgogne, Claire Pichet, Christine Ott, Christian Quermalet, Marc Sens, Nicolas Stevens, Jean-François Assy, Renaud Lhoest, Olivier Tilkin, Ronan le bars, Les Têtes Raides, Dominique A and Lisa Germano.
L'Absente is the fourth studio album by French composer and musician Yann Tiersen. When French film director Jean-Pierre Jeunet asked Tiersen if he was interested in writing the film score for Amélie, Tiersen was already working on L'Absente. The album was released on 5 June 2001 through EMI France, and was preceded by two promotional singles for "À quai" and "Bagatelle". L'Absente is an album of great variety with Tiersen playing many instruments including an old-fashioned typewriter and a pot, and it is characterized by several guests contributions provided by the 35-member Ensemble Orchestral Synaxis conducted by Guillaume Bourgogne, French folk rock group Têtes Raides, singers Dominique A, Lisa Germano, Neil Hannon, and Belgian actress Natacha Régnier, ondes Martenot player Christine Ott, Christian Quermalet, guitarist Marc Sens, viola player Bertrand Lambert, violinists Yann Bisquay and Sophie Naboulay, saxophonist Grégoire Simon, and drummer Sacha Toorop. L'Absente peaked at number 41 on the French Albums Chart.
Ginette Martenot (1902–1996) was a French pianist, and an expert and leading performer on the twentieth-century electronic instrument the ondes Martenot, which was invented by her brother Maurice. At the age of sixteen, she entered the Paris Conservatory, where she studied counterpoint and fugue with the composer Arthur Honegger. She gave the first performance as solo ondist in Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie, with Yvonne Loriod taking the solo piano part.
The ondes Martenot or ondes musicales is an early electronic musical instrument. It is played with a keyboard or by moving a ring along a wire, creating "wavering" sounds similar to a theremin. A player of the ondes Martenot is called an ondist.
Jean-Pierre Leguay is a French organist, composer and improviser. He studied with André Marchal, Gaston Litaize, Rolande Falcinelli (organ), Simone Plé-Caussade (counterpoint), and Olivier Messiaen (composition), before serving as titular organist at Notre-Dame-des-Champs, Paris from 1961 to 1984. In 1985 he was named a titular organist at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, alongside Olivier Latry, Yves Devernay and Philippe Lefebvre. He held this position through the end of 2015, and is now titular organist emeritus.
Time to Die is the fourth solo album by Christine Ott, and is described as the sequel to her second album Only Silence Remains released in 2016. The album is opening by a reference to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner; the title track pivots around that Rutger Hauer monologue, here narrated by Casey Brown on a particular combination of Ondes Martenot, synthesizers, timpani and tubular bells. The album is then developing very different orchestrations on the subject of death and rebirth. For the musician and director Fredo Viola ; "The way I see the album is as a series of quite cinematic meditations on the theme of death and dying, changing prismatically, up to that incredibly delicate and beautiful conclusion.."
Christine Ott is a French pianist, vocalist, ondist, and composer.
Solitude Nomade is the first solo album of Christine Ott, ondist and pianist. The album is composed of instrumental tracks, in which the Ondes Martenot are the key instrument.. It was recorded with the help of 15 separate collaborators, including Yann Tiersen, Anne-Gaëlle Bisquay, François Pierron, Thierry Balasse, Eric Groleau, Monique Pierrot, Marc Sens, Ophir Lévy.
Augustin Viard is a French musician who plays the ondes Martenot, an electronic instrument developed in the 1920s.
Chimères is the third solo album of Christine Ott. Chimères was entirely conceived using only Ott's Ondes Martenot. The album was produced by Paul Régimbeau (Mondkopf) and Frederic D Oberland (Oiseaux-Tempête), who arranged the tracks with the composer by manipulating the sounds of the Ondes Martenot via live effect boxes and sonic manipulation. The album opens with the piece "Comma", which has been compared to Olivier Messiaen's work, and the album develops eight pieces from contemporary classical to electronic music and avant-garde music, also compared to Sergei Prokofiev and Daniel Lopatin.
