Paul Clift (born 21 March 1978) is an Australian composer of contemporary classical music.
Biography
Born in Melbourne, Australia, Paul Clift began his musical education with studies of piano.[1] Upon graduating with a Bachelor's degree in music composition and linguistics from Monash University, he moved to Paris, where he undertook further study of composition with Franck Bedrossian, Jean-Luc Hervé and Philippe Leroux.[1] In 2006, he moved to London, where he studied with George Benjamin at King's College. The following year, he returned to Paris to participate in the IRCAM Cursus de composition et d'informatique musicale,[2]
Paul Clift |
|---|
[1] culminating in the premiere at the 2009 Paris Agora Festival[3] of his work With my limbs in the dark[4] for chamber ensemble, electronics and dancer, composed in collaboration with French choreographer Alban Richard.[4] Subsequently, he moved to New York for doctoral studies at Columbia University,[5] where he received further tuition from Fred Lerdahl, Tristan Murail and Fabien Lévy.[1] His doctoral thesis deals with musical temporality and its relationship with memory and perception.[6] While working on his doctorate, he undertook residencies at the Paul Sacher Foundation (Basel) to research alternative temporal/spatial notation systems and at IRCAM to develop the "Acoustic Aggregate Synthesis" system,[7] a "real-time performance tool which fuses synthetic and acoustic sound sources to achieve semi-acoustic resynthesis of a pre-defined acoustic model."[8]
Upon graduation from Columbia University, he moved to Basel, Switzerland, where he currently resides.[9] From 2016 to 2022, he served as Artistic Director of neuverBand[1], a chamber ensemble dedicated to contemporary music. In 2019, his large-scale scenic work "Portal Fantasies," composed in collaboration with cultural historian Barbara Piatti, was premiered at the Zeiträume Biennale für neue Musik und Architektur in Basel.[10] In January 2023, he accepted the post as the Artistic Director of Ensemble Recherche in Freiburg.[11]
His compositions are published by BabelScores,[12] Schweizer Musikedition[13] and the Australian Music Centre.[9]
Selected Works
- automation of the personalization process for two oboes, electronics and video (2023)[14]
- collective imaginary for chamber ensemble, electronics and video (2022)
- the grammar of shadows for chamber ensemble (2021)
- turn me on, dead man for soprano, electronics and video (2020)
- Tombeau de Clément Ader for chamber ensemble and electronics (2020)[15]
- La Géométrie d'après Descartes for orchestra (2020)
- the great silence for chamber ensemble (2019)
- RGBA for saxophone quartet (2019)
- Portal Fantasies, a musical, architectural and literary promenade for two actors & five musicians (2019)[10]
- the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there for flute, saxophone and piano (2019)
- Astatine for saxophone, accordion, cello and electronics (2019)[16]
- V Prostranem Morju Sanj for flute, violin, piano and a fourth performer (2018)
- Shadow Art II for flute, voice and electronics (2018)
- élan vital for flute, clarinet, saxophone and piano (2018)[17]
- The sea isn't rising, the ground is sinking for soprano, saxophone, piano, percussion and electronics (2017)
- the more perfect is the more immaterial for chamber ensemble (2016)
- Radotements avec citation for solo trombone (2016)[18]
- Objets à réaction poétique for 19 instruments (2015)
- presence, absence, degree for accordion and electronics (2015)
- duet/anagram for two saxophones and electronics (2015)
- Colours are like memories of other colours for string octet and electronics (2014)[19]
- On the celestial hierarchy for chamber ensemble (2014)[20]
- qui, dove mezzo son... for flute solo and chamber ensemble (2014)[21]
- Le détour permet le retour for string quartet, electronics and video (2013)
- Feuille Volante for solo alto flute (2012)
- Infinite Regress for 10 instruments (2011)
- 1950-C for solo guitar (2010)[22]
- With my limbs in the dark for chamber ensemble, dancer and electronics (2009)[4]