Jean Piché » Biography

Trois-Rivières, Québec, 1951

• Composer

Jean Piché

Jean Piché is a composer and video artist from Montréal, where he lives in an old church and teaches at the Université de Montréal. He has been active in digital music since the very first days of the medium, and over the past 20 years has explored cutting-edge high technologies as applied to music and moving images, including live electronics, fixed electronic media and performance. His work has been recognized by a number of awards given in this country and abroad, and has been shown and heard in Europe, Asia and North America, (his favourite concert remains the one he gave in New Delhi in 1996). Following a number of active collaborations with a number of video artists, he taught himself videography from the bottom up, and now directs and produces his own video work. His work focuses on parallel compositional paradigms for abstracted visuals and music, a new hybrid form he calls “videomusic.” His first opera “Yo Soy la Disentegracion” was produced in 1997 by the Montréal company Chants Libres. He was programme officer at the Canada Council in the 1980s and in 1990, produced the final edition of the New Music America Festival.

Jean Piché is also involved in audio software design to facilitate the specification of control vectors for digital sound synthesis and processing, including the program Cecilia, which currently resides in many a composer’s toolbox. In 1999 he designed a synchronized video projection system for three large screens, and an image acquisition system with three digital cameras. This system is used for his productions and public performances.