HERVE Jean-Luc (1960)

A French composer born August 10, 1960 in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés.

In parallel to a course on orchestration and electro-acoustics at the Boulogne-Billancourt Conservatory, Jean-Luc Hervé followed, at the Paris Conservatory, the composition courses of Emmanuel Nunes and - in an encounter that would prove decisive - Gérard Grisey. A research composer at Ircam, then in residence at the Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto in 2001 and the DAAD in Berlin in 2003, he is receptive to Japanese culture, particularly its gardens, within which he draws a new source of inspiration. Attracting attention with his very earliest pieces Envol (1992-1994), Intérieurs rouges and Les Deux Infinis (1993), Ciels (1994) – for which he won the Goffredo Petrassi Prize, Presque du feu (1995), Le temps scintille (1996)…, he subsequently devoted himself to the novel form of concert-installations. Examples of these are Effet lisière (2003), Mémoire Spirale (2005) and Amplification propagation (2006), through which the listener is closely associated with his environment, as in the project developed with Ircam and a landscape artiste concerning the creation of a sound garden for the Cité International des Arts. The founder of the contemporary music ensemble Instant Donné, Jean-Luc Hervé also currently teaches composition at the Boulogne-Billancourt Conservatory.