PETROSSIAN Michel

Michel Petrossian looks to the ancient past for the sounds of the future. His interest in the civilizations of the Near East in particular has led him to study a dozen ancient languages and to travel extensively in search of an organic renewal of musical language, but also to draw from them models for reflection on the general role of music and its link with the body, the constituent aspects of a society or the organization of the universe. Grand Prize winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition, Grand Prix Lycéen des Compositeurs, he lives and works in Paris.

Compositions

Biography

Michel Petrossian was attracted by the world of art since his childhood, starting by painting and studying the guitar and cello, and turning quickly to composing his own music. He graduated from Paris Conservatory, where he also co-founded the Cairn ensemble dedicated to the contemporary repertoire. A keen popularizer of contemporary music, in 1998 he co-founded the Cairn ensemble dedicated to the new music, and his works were aired on the French public radios, France Musique and France Culture. An enthusiast for ancient civilizations, he has studied a dozen functional languages. He received a Master’s degree in Classics at the Sorbonne University in Paris, France, and has taught biblical Hebrew at the ELCOA (Ecole des Langues et des Civilisations de l’Orient Ancien) in Paris, sojourning one year in Jerusalem, Israel, at the French Archeological School.  Such practical studies got him interested in ancient Middle Eastern music, a subject he has taught at the Polis Institute in Jerusalem; he also worked with Annie Bélis, a CNRS chief of department and a specialist in ancient Greek music. He has travelled extensively in areas with a rich history such as Ethiopia, Israel, Uzbekistan, Jordan, Cyprus, Armenia and Georgia, among others. Nurtured by these experiences, a new way of composing emerged: his piano concerto In The Wake Of Ea, inspired by a Babylonian tablet, was chosen in 2013 as the winner among over a hundred and fifty pieces by the jury of the International Composition Prix Queen Elisabeth in Belgium. On the occasion of the commemoration of Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide he was requested to compose a large piece, Ciel à vif, for three soloists, choir and orchestra, performed for the first time at the Chatelêt Theater in Paris, France, in April 2015, under the baton of Alain Altinoglu and the Armenian World Orchestra, which has reunited the musicians of the armenian origin coming all around the world. The concert was placed under the patronage of the French President. Also in 2015 he received a commission from Musicatreize ensemble. His Horae quidem cedunt… for 12 solo singers based on the latin text of Virgil has been performed during the Festival of Aix en Provence, in France. In 2016, under the patronage of Her Royal Higness Princess Caroline of Hanover, Michel Petrossian  and composers Gad Barnéa et Thierry Escaish created three pieces, one each, based on Hebrew, Greek and Latin texts from the Book of Jeremiah. In January 2017 at the Grand Théâtre de Provence, Aix-en-Provence, France, a new piece for choir and orchestra commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture was performed. Amours sidoniennes is inspired by some Greek inscriptions discovered in a funerary cave in Beit Gouvrin, Israel where Petrossian has participated to some archaeological investigations. In 2017, on the occasion of the inauguration of a new room dedicated to icons at the Petit Palais Museum in Paris, France, the curator of the Byzantine collection commissioned a multidisciplinary piece Chanter l’icône (Declaiming the icon), where music, text and images recreate a Byzantine hymn through six musical sequences and texts in five languages. On a completely different front of activity, in 2018 Michel Petrossian co signed with jazzman Tigran Hamasyan the soundtrack of Bravo, virtuose!  The DVD set of the movie comprises a CD with his clarinet concerto written for the soundtrack and performed by the most praised French clarinetist Philippe Berrod. His work in the movie business continued with Robert Guediguian’s Gloria Mundi (official selection and the Coppa Volpi, the Prize of the best female actor at the Mostra del Cinema in Venice, Italy) whose soundtrack he composed in early 2019, Et la fête continue with the same film director (2023, recorded by Orchestre National d’Île de France), and En fanfare with Emmanuel Courcol (2024). Another large-scale project was Michel Petrossian’s opera oratorio Le Chant d’Archak on original text by leading French author Laurent Gaudé, for a formation of two directors, twelve solo voices, a children choir and an instrumental ensemble, commissioned by the French Radio and performed at the Grand Auditorium of the Radio France, Paris, in November 2018.  In 2022 he was commissionned a new ballet Sept, les Anges de Sinjar inspired by the Yezidi mythology. It was performed by the Ensemble Instrumental Contemporain from Lyon and the Michel Hallet Danse Company at the Festival Printemps des Arts of Monaco; a CD of the ballet has been issued on March 2022. In 2023 Petrossian won the Grand Prix Lycéen des Compositeurs – a Prize where students from the French High-Schools are voting for their prefered composition, among a panel of six works selected by a high-profile Jury. Following this distinction, he has been commissionned for the Ensemble Intercontemporain. Timkat, his new piece based on his trips to Ethiopia is scored for the whole spectrum of the Pierre Boulez’s founded ensemble which is considered to be the champion for the new music in France and abroad. The premiere will take place on 23rd of May 2024, at the Maison de la Radio, Paris. On the same month another new commission for solo viola will be performed by the violist Karine Lethiec at the Musée de l’Histoire de l’Homme in Paris. It is designed as a hommage to the most noticeable object coming from the Prehistory, the Venus of Lespugue, and will be performed in front of this 25.000 years old small statue.  Trois amours, a monographic CD of his vocal music, has been issued by the vocal ensemble Musicatreize from Marseille, France, in 2023, receiving five stars in the Classica review. Antother CD, Armenian Cello Concertos with Petrossian’s concerto among those by Khachatourian and Babajdanian, recorded by the cellist Alexander Chaushian, professor at the Royal College of Music (London) and the Armenian National Philharmonic Orchestra, received wide recognition, and has been aired worldwide, the oeuvre of Petrossian receiving over twenty international critical reviews throughout Europe, America ans Asia. Through years Michel Petrossian has developed several projects in the USA: a work with the pianist Andrew Tyson who gave the American premiere of his La lutte ardente du vert et de l’or (Carnegie Hall, 2015 and a laudatory review in the New York Times), a contribution to Rhapsodies Around The World (University of Michigan, 2016) for clarinet and piano commissioned by the American-Israeli clarinetist Guy Yehuda, Latens deitas (commission by the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, 2019) and two commissions from Dilijan Chamber Music Series, LA, the trio A fiery flame, a flaming fire (2017) which has been issued on the CD Modulation necklace, and the string quartet Liber Secretorum Henoch inspired by a trip in Ethiopia (2019).  Actually Michel Petrossian works on an opera based on his own libretto and commissionned by Leonardo Garcia Alarcon. The work is to be premiered in Gevena, in June 2025. His music is published by Editions Gravis (Berlin) and Artchipel (France).

www.michelpetrossian.com

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Events

18

May

2024

Michel Petrossian

World premiere Venus de Lespugue (for viola) Musée de l’Homme, Paris, 7:30 pm Karine Lethiec – viola read more