|
Benjamin Thigpen, nomad, born in the United States, with degrees in English Literature, Comparative Literature and “Esthetics, Technologies and Artistic Creations,” immigrated to Paris at the age of 31. Since then, he has composed at GRM (Paris), at Musiques et Recherches (Belgium), at SCRIME (Bordeaux), at EMS (Stockholm), at the Visby International Centre for Composers (Sweden), at STEIM (Amsterdam), at Djerassi (California), at l'Espace Totem (Montreal), in his bedroom and in the train. After 6 years teaching computer music at Ircam (Paris), followed by a brief period at the University of Washington (Seattle), he currently teaches at the Conservatory of Cuneo (Italy) and at the the Royal Conservatory of Mons (Belgium). As a free-lance musician and programmer, he collaborates with the State University of New York (USA), with New Adventures in Sound Art (Toronto), with La Kitchen.com (Paris), with Noise Watchers Unlimited (Luxembourg), with CIRM (Nice), with the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti (Milan) and with Ircam (Paris).
His music is concerned with issues of energy, density, complexity, movement, simultaneity and violence, and he often works extensively with space as a primary compositional parameter. He thinks that music does not exist in time but rather creates it, and considers that music is not the art of sound but the art of the transcendence of sound.
|
