Pune: French musician-composer Robert Piéchaud (53) is in love with the medium of movie as a lot as music. He’s a pupil of Claude Helffer (piano), Gilles Harlé (organ) and Charles Bornstein (orchestration), and commonly performs in recitals and sometimes contains his personal compositions in Paris, though he writes primarily for chamber ensembles, for voice and piano. His ardour about silent cinema (he loves the works of Buster Keaton, Charles Chaplin, Linder, Mizoguchi or Ozu) finds him performing in movie live shows on the Louvre Auditorium yearly since 2014, and on the Cinémathèque Française and different locations in France.
“Silent movies have a lot to inform us; they will make you giggle, benefit from the feeling of reliving an period,” stated Robert, who’s into cine live shows — performing stay music on silent movie. The music could be both scored, or absolutely improvised.
“Being obsessed with silent movies and music, binding the 2 was a pure factor to do. My imaginative and prescient to performing stay music on a silent movie may very well be described as a renewed dialogue over time, area or tradition. The improvisatory of the music makes it (by essence!) very spontaneous, risk-taking, by no means boring, and completely different each time, even for a similar programme,” stated Robert.
Robert is in Pune for his new venture of cine live performance utilizing Indian silent movies which are with the Nationwide Movie Archive of India (NFAI). His venture is in collaboration with Alliance Francaise in India and funded by French Institute in India.
“I got here right here with a pre-conceived concept of silent movies being all about mythology and devotion, however as an alternative discovered that they’re very fascinating, some even humorous and lightweight headed,” stated Robert, who first fell in love with Buster Keaton’s silent movie, “The Common”.
“My son Aliocha, who was 3 or 4 years previous at the moment, was a fan, and that inspired me to try stay music on silent movies. And it occurs to be the primary movie I ever accompanied (it was in Paris, in 2007),” he stated.
“It’s a massive danger that I’m trying to do right here. Sure, I’ve expertise of performing stay for silent movies of Buster Keaton and Charles Chaplin in Europe for greater than ten years, however right here it’s for the primary time that I’m making an attempt to carry out and improvise for the silent movies made in India,” he stated.
Robert got here up with the thought of the venture (“Cine live shows in India”) when he visited Pune for the primary time two years in the past as an assistant to musician Floy Krouchi. Since 2012, Krouchi has been engaged on the bass augmented by electronics via her venture “Bass Holograms” in collaboration with nationwide centre for musical creation (Cesare-cncm), for which she composed a number of live performance items. She was in Pune for analysis and efficiency, a musical encounter between the FKBass, an augmented bass with built-in expertise, and the Rudra Veena.
Robert on piano and his colleague Stan de Nussac (saxophone) are bringing music which isn’t meant to be tried with Indian movies. Robert on the classical and new music facet, Stan in jazz, it was later that they discovered the chance to collaborate, with the creation of the Trio Trans-Atlantismes (with vocalist Jill Alessandra McCoy) in 2010 the place they experimented with kinds midway between writing strict and improvisation, an journey that can make them the stage of the Bouffes du Nord (Pageant d’Automne à Paris, 2016). However it’s above all due to the film-concert that, for ten years, they’ve been inventing a standard language, Robert on the piano and Stan on the wind devices (saxophones, bass clarinet, flute) between jazz and modern music, via improvisation, between East and West, in cinematographic repertoires as diversified as Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Mizoguchi or Ozu and in prestigious locations such because the Auditorium du Louvre or the Cinémathèque Française.
“The cine live performance is deliberate in a number of main Indian cities subsequent yr after Diwali and can function an event to exhibit our (Indian) silent movie heritage, coupled with diversified silent movies from France,” stated Ravinder Bhakar, managing director, NFDC and director, NFAI.
Robert loved discussing Hindi movies like Hindi Murliwalla and Kaliya Mardan so much. “These movies demystify the idea of being fully devotional which had me nervous whether or not I’d do justice to them with my type of compositions, however I discover that these movies are so touching somewhat than being pompous and Dadasaheb Phalke’s movies are a delight to look at,” he stated.
