Kasper T. Toeplitz

Kasper T. Toeplitz is a french composer and musician (bass) of polish origin, born in 1960, who lives in Paris.

Working beyond the barriers too widely recognized between contemporary music - "Classical" - and what is termed non-academic - or simply "alive": in this case in point, it’s electronic music, or noise music. Thus he works just as much for the big institutions of State (GMEM, GRM, IRCAM, Radio-France) as with experimental or unclassifiable musicians, such Éliane Radigue, Zbigniew Karkowski, Dror Feiler, Tetsuo Furudate, Phill Niblock ou Art Zoyd .Influenced by Scelsi and Xenakis, at first he wrote a lot for traditional instruments (he received several prizes and distinctions: 1st prize in composition for orchestra at the festival of Besançon, 1st prize in the "Opéra Autrement/Acanthes" competition, Villa Médicis Hors-les-Murs in New York, prize Léonard de Vinci in San Francisco, Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto, DAAD in Berlin); he has also written for his electric guitar orchestra, Sleaze Art. He then fully integrated the computer into his work, as much as an extension of his compositional thought, as for its use as a separate, genuine, live instrument (via the programming language MAX notably).

His experimentation into instrument-computer came to an end, in 2003, with the creation of BassComputer: an instrument with two entry points, a bass crossed with a computer - or conversely; a concept which he expands to other instruments (percussion in “Unfinished Metal Waves”, saxophone and hurdy-gurdy in “Dust Reconstructions”).

In 2004, he commissioned a piece from Eliane Radigue called “Elemental II”, which he interpreted for the BassComputer. This was an opportunity for him to set up his own label, ROSA (Recordings Of Sleaze Art). He renewed the experience commissioning Phil Niblock’s “Yam almost may” (Touch Records TO59), and Dror Feiler’s “Ousia”. He also recorded “Capture”, one of his own compositions, on ROSA (Rosa#2, 2005), as well as “ZKT”, by Le Dépeupleur, a laptop duet, formed with Zbigniew Karkowski, and which has been together since 1999 (Rosa#3, 2006).

He has also written a lot for dance (Myriam Gourfink, Loic Touzé, Olivia Granville, Emmanuelle Huynh, Hervé Robbe, Artefact, Christian Trouillas, Jean-Marc Matos), as well as theatre; he has always shown a great interest in literature (“J'irai vers le nord, j'irai dans la nuit polaire”, his first opera, was based on Sylvia Plath's texts, as was “Great Expectations” on Kathy Acker's texts; “Ruine”, however, was composed on a François Bon text), and more recently he has developed "combined” pieces, mixing light and/or video images (“K_apture”, for computer solo, on Dominik Barbier's videos).

In 2007 he created, with Eryck Abecassis and [http://wendling.free.fr/ Wilfried Wendling] , KERNEL, a computer ensemble devoted to interpretation, live stricto sensu (without any samples or sequences), of electronic music compositions.

everal works

*"Nature Morte" : for orchestra, 1988.
*"Zéline" : for violoncello solo, 1989.
*"Paysage foudroyé" : for electric bass solo, 1989.
*"J'irai vers le nord, j'irai dans la nuit polaire" : opera based on Sylvia Plath's texts, (1st prize in the «Opéra Autrement» competition, Centre Acanthes), 1989.
*"Lhow" : for orchestra (1st prize in composition for orchestra at the festival of Besançon), 1990.
*"Anachorète" : for soprano saxophone solo, 1991.
*"Memory-Cendres" : for a woman's voice, percussions, clarinet and double bass, 1992.
*"Sthill" : for 8 saxophones, 1992.
*"Blind Sucht" :for 9 instruments and electroacoustic dispositive, 1993.
*"Ephémérides" : for 9 instruments, 1995.
*"Siyahi" : for orchestra, 1996.
*"Stances d'orchestre" : for orchestra, 1997.
*"Je est une autre" : for voice, violoncello, clarinet, double bass and percussions, 1997.
*"Ruine" :for orchestra and soprano solo, on a François Bon text, 1998.
*"Biel" : for orchestra and samplers, 2000.
*"Appars/Vague de pas" : for small orchestra, electronic keyboard and percussions, 2001.
*"Battling Siki" : opera for strings, electronics instruments, theremin, percussions and computers, 2003.
*"Froz#5" : for tubax and computer, 2003.
*"Contraindre", for theremin (Laurent Dailleau), chor. Myriam Gourfink, 2004.
*"Capture" : for three dancers/musicians via moving capture by video, 2005 (CD: Rosa #2).
*"Unfinished Metal Waves" : for big tam (Didier Casamitjana, Jérôme Mimetic Soudan) and computer, 2006.
*"This is my House" : for saxophone (Ulrich Krieger) and computer, chor. Myriam Gourfink, 2006.
*"Champ des Larmes" : spectacle with Art Zoyd (written with Gérard Hourbette), 2006.
*" Lärmesmitte" : for BassComputer, 2006.
*"Dust Reconstructions" : piece for a nonfixed instrumentarium; in its first execution, for hurdy-gurdy (Stevie Wishart), saxophone (Ulrich Krieger), BassComputer (himself) and computers (all of them), 2007.
*"Kernel#2" : KERNEL's first creation, 2007.
* "The Deep" : for and by KERNEL, 2008.

External links

* [http://www.sleazeart.com/ Sleaze Art: KTT Site]
* [http://www.myspace.com/sleazeart/ KTT on myspace]
* [http://www.metamkine.com/? KTT chez Metamkine]
* [http://www.myspace.com/kernelkttoeplitz KERNEL on MySpace]