François-Bernard Mâche

François-Bernard Mâche is a French composer of contemporary music. He is a former student of Émile Passani and Olivier Messiaen and has also received a diploma in Greek archaeology (1957) and a teaching certificate (Agrégation de Lettres classiques, 1958). He was a member of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris from 1958–63. He has composed electroacoustic, orchestral, chamber, choral, vocal and piano works. He has been a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts since 2002 and occupies the chair of the late Iannis Xenakis.

Mâche’s Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion, as a whole argues for a return in composition to mythic thought, includes a study of “ornitho-musicology” using a technique of Nicolas Ruwet’s Langage, musique, poésie (1972) paradigmatic segmentation analysis, shows that birdsongs are organized according to a repetition-transformation principle. One purpose of the book was to “begin to speak of animal musics other than with the quotation marks”, and he is credited by Dario Martinelli with the creation of zoomusicology.

Other major works include Kassandra for large ensemble and tape, which won the Italia Prize in 1977; Eridan (1986) and Moires (1994), both written for the Arditti Quartet; Kengir (1991), settings of ancient Sumerian love poems, and Manuel de résurrection (1998), setting texts from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, both written for the soprano Françoise Kubler and Ensemble “Accroche Note”. Several of Mâche’s works from the 1980s onwards make use of the sampling keyboard, notably L’estuaire du temps (1993) for sampler and large orchestra.

Makis Solomos

Born in Greece and living in France, Makis Solomos is Professor of musicology at the University Paris 8 and director of the research team MUSIDANSE. His book From Music to Sound. The Emergence of Sound in 20th- and 21st-Century Music (Routledge, 2019) deals with an important mutation of today’s music. His new book Towards an Ecology of Sound. Environmental, Mental and Social Ecologies in Music, Sound Art and Artivisms (Routledge, 2023) deals with an enlarged notion of ecology, mixing environmental and socio-political issues. He is also one of the main Xenakis’ specialists. His forthcoming book is entitled Habiter (avec) Xenakis / Dwelling (with) Xenakis. His new research field is music and degrowth and he is also developing a project on the island of Gyaros, a land of political exile in the past and now under the protection of WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature).

John Levack Drever

John Levack Drever’s practice bridges acoustics, audiology, soundscape, experimental music, sonic art, sound art and urban design. He has devised listening experiences and practice research projects on place, listening and hearing in many different contexts and configurations, often in collaboration.  Commissions range from the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, Paris (1999), Shiga National Museum, Japan (2012), Trumpington Park Primary School, Cambridge (2021-22) to IMMA, Dublin (2023). He has been awarded prizes in the Music Nova Competition for Electroacoustic Music (1996 & 1997) and the winner of the Worst Sound Category in the Sound of the Year Awards 2020. In 2001, he was awarded a PhD from Dartington College of Arts. He coined the concept of auraldiveristy and co-edited Aural Diversity with Prof Andrew Hugill (Routledge 2022). He has held visiting positions at City University of Hong Kong, Seian University of Art and Design, Japan, Loughborough University and Aarhus University. Drever was Professor of Acoustic Ecology and Sound Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. In 2023, he wrote and presented Tuner of the World for BBC Radio 3, a radio feature on R. Murray Schafer, which was shortlisted for the Prix Europa.