Jean-François Laporte takes an intuitive approach to creating music, learning through concrete experimentation with sound. By actively listening to each sound, he strives to understand its reality and its underlying structure. His music is the result of working closely with the raw materials of sound. These sounds come from the everyday environment or from both traditional and invented instruments, with no form of hierarchy. Drawing on this diversity of sound sources, Jean-François works in multiple musical languages - from instrumental to electroacoustic - and also ventures at times into the exploration of random and improvised sounds.

Along with his activities as a composer, Jean-François has been developing and making musical instruments that produce unconventional sounds. The composer recently added robotic and computerized controls to some of his invented instruments (the Tu-Yo and the Bowls), giving them new autonomy and increasing their possibilities (the Khôra sound installation/performance presented in September 2002 in Montréal, produced by Fonderie Darling). In addition to works for invented instruments, since 2000, Jean-François has composed a large number of works for conventional instruments: À l'Ombre d'un murmure , premiered by the Ensemble Contemporain de Montreal on its cross-Canada Generation 2000 tour,le Chant de l'inaudible , commissioned by the Quasar Saxophone quartet for the SMCQ, Êkhéô , commissioned by the Trio Fibonnacci,Prana , a mixed workk performed by the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, andle chant des baleines for the guitarist Tim Brady.

In November 2002, he received several Opus awards, which honour excellence in the Québec music community.   These included Composer of the year, and Discovery of the year. In addition, his composition <Tribal , for an orchestra of invented instruments, was named Composition of the year. In 2004, his work Prana received first prize in the mixed music category of the 23 rd International Luigi Russolo electroacoustic music competition. Also in 2004 his work dans le ventre du Dragon , received first prize in the epectroacoustic tape music category of the International competition of contemporary music   Citta Di Udine. Recently his new pieces call Plenitude of Emptyness was named "Composition of the year" at the Opus Gala.

In the past four years, Jean-François has been increasingly active on the international scene. In 2001, he began working with the Japanese-Swiss choreographer Heidi S.Durning (Fujima Kanso o) ( Intuitive Sound Dance andKimono series), took part in the tour leading up to Quebec in New York (Quebec on Hudson) with a piece for the Siren Organ orchestra (la valse des sirènes ), as well as creating two commissioned projects for the Royaumont Abbey in France: a 40 minutes electroacoustic work for a choreography by Susan Buirge ( L'Oeil de la forêt , january 2002), and a 35 minutes piece for the Roman organ in the Abbey ( Procession , septembre 2002). A European tour featuring on the sound installation Khôra began in february 2003, in Albi, France. In March 2003, Jean-François was invited to give a weeklong workshop at the Abbey of Royaumont on the topic of artistic creation.

L'espace du blanc (2006)
for baritone saxophone

Premiere by Jean-Marc Bouchard in Studio 12 of Radio-Canada.

La plénitude du vide, (2005)
The plenitude of emptiness

OPUS prize : Premiere of the year

Starting from "almost nothing", to build a "totality"; by freeing a place of what inhabits it, to reveal its grandeur; by bordering emptiness, to give meaning to it.   Using very limited technical means, Jean-François Laporte gives praise, in The plenitude of emptiness , to the grandeur of the "small", the richness of the "simple" : some copper and aluminum tubes, saxophone mouthpieces, latex membranes and two baritone saxophones with all their keys kept closed, all in a continuous discourse where unisons, predominant, are richly coloured with timbres, harmonics and naturally-occurring beatings.   Yet, of this extremely rudimentary material, of this melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, instrumental and formal "near-nothing", a large-scale opus takes shape, which gradually and naturally occupies the church in all its grandeur.   Could the simplest sound possibly animate a space this vast?   Sound-space and architectural space then allow us a glance at a particularity in their relation: sound seems to have the ability to reveal the physical space it occupies, instead of filling it - emptiness stays, but appears surprisingly full...

     But what is The plenitude of emptiness made of, if not of pitches and rhythms?   Simply of timbres: Jean-François Laporte, here, like in the ensemble of his work, presents a "musique de matière" that lets the sound naturally evolve, sometimes through unsuspected paths, guided by the musicians' attentive breath.   As all the instruments have a fixed fundamental, the seeming simplicity of the piece's global discourse is backed by an extreme complexity of timbres and modes of playing: as all the sound material comprised in the piece comes almost exclusively from the generators (reeds and membranes of the different instruments), the performers are faced with a worthy challenge, as they have to put aside the usual physical virtuosity (finger dexterity) in favour of a listening virtuosity - to apprehend and then let themselves be guided by the evolution of sound from the subtleties of breath.

     Such a discourse also place the musicians in a very particular relation regarding time: time here isn't counted, fixed by some metric - to the contrary, the basic pulsation of the piece being established by the rhythm of breathing, it's the musical discourse that is here subjected to time, the time necessary for the mutation of timbres.   The plenitude of emptiness tries to proceed with a freeing of sound and time, maybe even of thought, this as much for the performers than the listeners: each is being placed in a situation of physical listening rather than intellectual, as all the usual technique or thinking mechanisms give way to the simple natural evolution of timbres.   With this liberation, a void is made, a new time/space is created, entirely available to the deployment of sound.  

This piece wouldn't have reached its actual form without the great availability from Quasar musicians, whom accepted to participate in numerous sound experimentations during the whole process of its conception.

Procession (2002)
for 4 roman organ pipes

Tribute to an instrument, tribute to an acoustic space, Procession wishes to reveal the sonic richness of the Royaumont abbey's Roman organ in conjunction with one of its rooms - the old refectory.

As an artist, I was moved by the location's vibrations, trying to create a ceremony worthy of its spiritual depth. The organ rediscovers its primary form; it is not a fixed keyboard instrument any more, but rather an assembly of mobile, independant pipes : four musicians, each one operating a single pipe animated by their own breath, fill the space with harmonies that elude the keyboard's traditional play. The 'organists', traditionally hidden behind their instrument, can now show their human face while leading a procession towards the spectators. Progressively, the sounds will scatter all around, investing the location in all its dimensions like a strong creative breath.

The novelty of the playing techniques applied to the Roman organ - in contrast with the instrument's ancient origins - enable them to breathe a new life into it. Indeed, Procession allows the organ to free itself from the habitual constraints of its immobility, while revealing the hidden harmonic richness of its pipes. From the depths of the XIIth century, a location, an instrument arise again, and let us discover a newly found modernness.

Procession was commissioned by the Royaumont abbey, and was supported by the Canadian Arts Council. It was created in the Royaumont abbey on September 28, 2002.

Le Chant de l'inaudible (2001)
for saxophone quartet

A commission of Quasar with the assistance of the Canada Council for the arts, premiered in 2001 at the Théâtre La Chapelle.

La plénitude du vide

Procession 1

Procession 2

Le chant de l'inaudible