PFL Traject is the improvisational trio of Pascal Pariaud, clarinets and pipes, Jean-Charles François, percussion, and Gilles Laval, electric guitar, from Lyon, France. The improbable meeting of three musicians – Pascal Pariaud, Jean-Charles François, Gilles Laval – on the occasion of a concert in 2006, as part of an improvisation festival, is at the origin of the creation of the group PFL Traject.. The terms of “traveling”, of “trajectory”, in their plural dimensions are the constituent elements that best define PFL Traject, concerning as much the history of each individual member as what determines the collective improvised playing. The members of the group all went through very different journeys : Pascal Pariaud is a clarinetist specialized in new music performance and early music, he is also a choral conductor and teaches at the Villeurbanne National Music School ; Jean-Charles François is a composer and percussionist who was professor at UC San Diego (1972-1990), founding member of the improvisation group KIVA (1975-1991) and directed a Center for music teaching at Lyon (1990-2007) ; coming from the world of Hardcore (Parkinson Square) and from the alternative scene, Gilles Laval has been involved with many unlikely, impossible to classify, like Chef Menteur, Impur with Fred Frith, La Douzaine., Triple G (slam electro noise), he is also the head of the popular music department at the Villeurbanne National Music School.
Each improvisation of PFL Traject is a voyage in the already constituted memory, a promenade in the garden of delights od what has already been cultivated. The performance will be a single improvisation without intermission whose duration can vary according to circumstances (45 minutes to 1 hour and 30 minutes). PFL Traject invites the audience to travel, to stroll, to ramble, to put oneself into orbit, to fly off at a tangent, to make the tour of a world that is well-defined in its individual windings, but is infinite in its collective combinations. At the same time a diversified trajectory of individualities, and trajectory in shared transports.
PFL Traject
The terms of “traveling”, of “trajectory”, in their plural dimensions are the constituent elements that best define PFL Traject, concerning as much the history of each individual member as what determines the collective improvised playing.
The members of the group all went through very different journeys, in the type of music they have tackled, in the instrumental families they have mastered, as well as in the professional role they have played in the institutions of the music world. If these wanderings in time and space are strongly contrasted, they are all three made of a considerable sum of varied experiences. Thus, along these sinuous roads, are juxtaposed the interpretation of more or less recent repertoires, the invention of new practices, the playing of early music instruments, of traditional music instruments, or of new technologies instruments, the care for a historical knowledge as a base for the interpretation of various repertories, the necessity to confront oneself to the chaos of the future world, the critical reflection on today’s art and its inscribing in the ways of cultural mediation and education. What brings these musicians together, is on the one hand for each of them a long personal pathway to the invention of sounds in the context of varied activities linked to improvisation. And, on the other hand, the strong belief, as a result of a recent collaboration in the institutions of music teaching, in the presence of a public service allowing the access for all to the musical practices and to the possibility for all to be able to invent the terms of their itineraries in connection with a multiplicity of cultural expressions.
Each improvisation of PFL Traject is a voyage in the already constituted memory, a promenade in the garden of delights od what has already been cultivated. Each member brings his own repertoire of sounds, individual manner of proceeding, collections of instruments and heterogeneous objects, musical gestures exploring the multiple manners of making sound – blowing, strumming, beating and scraping”¦
Each one brings his touch. At the same time, in the unfolding of the improvisation, always different, what is at stake is not just the superimposition of three divergent universes, but on the contrary a concern for elaborating together collective sonic worlds, in some blending aggregates in which the ideal is not to be able to recognize the individual instruments, or in some heterogeneous mixtures which will be perceived as global entities. As such PFL Traject invites the audience to travel, to stroll, to ramble, to put oneself into orbit, to fly off at a tangent, to make the tour of a world that is well-defined in its individual windings, but is infinite in its collective combinations. At the same time a diversified trajectory of individualities, and trajectory in shared transports.
Gilles Laval: Guitarist, composer.
Coming from the world of Hardcore (Parkinson Square) and from the alternative scene, Gilles Laval has constantly tried to meet other artistic horizons, and has been often at the origin of unlikely projects, impossible to classify, like Chef Menteur (a musical company), Impur with Fred Frith, La Douzaine (12 composers performers of rock and contemporary music., Triple G (slam electro noise)”¦ Over several years, his approach to music has given a greater importance to improvisation, in solo situation (Passes), with ephemeral meetings (Noel Akchoté, René Lussier, Laurent Grappe”¦), or within regular groups (Triple G, PFL Traject or Akuanosti (with Camel Zekri). He also participates in other projects like “Le miroir et le marteau” or Miss Goulash, and he composes music for dance and theatre companies. He participated with the choreographer Maguy Marin to the creation of Ramdam, a place for artistic creation and resources. He is the founder with Giacomo Spica of the Lyon label VMC Production (vmc-production.com). Gilles Laval also has a permanent post teaching at the Villeurbanne National Music School where he is the head of the popular music department. In this context he was responsible for the development of the “Scènes musicales”, a project for supporting groups of young musicians living in deprived areas of the city. In 2000 he obtained the highest State certification for teaching. He is the co-director of Cra-p, an associative organization which is concerned with questioning the relationships between creativity, artistic teaching, new artistic forms and the role of the artist in society. Since 2000 he has been a professor at the Cefedem Rhône-Alpes, in Lyon, with the responsibility to educate future popular music teachers.
Pascal Pariaud: Clarinetist, pipes blower, singer, choral conductor, player of diatonic accordeon.
Pascal Pariaud studied clarinet, and early music performance at the Paris and Lyon CNSMD, and musicology at Lyon II University. Having a passion for new music, he created in 1996, the duo Marimba-clarinette, with Laurent Vieuble. He plays with many ensembles of contemporary music (Ensemble Forum, Aleph, “¦) and in many festivals. Meetings with Barre Phillips, Antoine Hervé, Llorenç Barber, Jean-Charles François, Fred Frith, Noel Akchoté, the National Jazz Orchestra (Claude Barthélémy), Gilles Laval, allow him to extend his involvement with improvisation. In 2000 he created a solo theatre piece at the IX Festival Alternativo de Teatro, Musica y Danza in Madrid, Spain. He participates in many live music-theatre performances. He also studied voice and was a member of the Chamber Choir of the Orchestre National de Lyon, where he worked under the direction of Bernard Tétu, Pierre Boulez, Mauricio Kagel. He conducts the vocal ensemble Jour de Fêtes (70 amateur choir members) formed in his village in the Beaujolais in 1983. He teaches permanently clarinet and improvisation at the Villeurbanne National Music School, and the pedagogy of chamber music and improvisation at the Cefedem Rhône-Alpes for the music teachers of the region. He plays early music instruments (chalumeaux, early clarinets) in several ensembles (Ensemble Philidor, La Grande Ecurie and La Chambre du Roy with J.C. Malgoire, Les Talents Lyriques with C.Rousset, the Concerto Polacco of Varsovie, the orchestra of l’Hostel Dieu, Opera Fuoco with David Stern, Les Concerts de l’Astrée avec Emmanuelle Haïm, Stradivaria, l’Ensemble A Venti. He is a member of La Douzaine, a collective of improvisator musicians, of Octobando, a Turkish marching band, and of PFL Traject.
Jean-Charles François: Percussionist, composer.
Jean-Charles François studied at the CNSMD in Paris. He studied composition with the Australian composer and conductor Keith Humble. Between 1962 and 1969, he participated as a soloist to numerous concerts of contemporary music in Paris and throughout Europe (Domaine musical, Ensemble Ars Nova, Ensemble Musique Vivante, SüdWestfunk, Hessische Rundfunk, West Deutsche Rundfunk, Palermo Festival, Venise Festival, Zagreb Festival, BBC London, Sender Freies Berlin, etc.). Between 1965 and 1969, he was the co-director of the Centre de Musique with Giuseppe Englert and Keith Humble, at the American Center in Paris. In 1969, he moved to Australia and was appointed principal Percussion at the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and as percussion teacher at the University of Melbourne. He returned to Paris in 1972 as Musical Director of the Théâtre de la Cité Internationale and lecturer at Paris VIII University. In September 1972, he went to the University of California San Diego with a fellowship from the Rockfeller Foundation. In 1973 he was appointed on the music faculty at UCSD. He became director of the Center for Music Experiment (1979-1982) and later chairman of the UCSD Music Department (1982-1985). In 1975 he founded the experimental improvisation group KIVA with the trombonist John Silber. The group KIVA gave many concerts in the United States, Mexico, Europe and Australia until 1991. His composition are published by Smith Publications, Baltimore. He has published numerous research articles on the subject of timbre and improvisation in Musique en Jeu (Paris), La Revue Esthétique (Paris), Traverses (Centre Pompidou, Paris), Perspectives of New Music (USA) et Percussive Notes Research Edition (USA), Open Spac (USA) and Enseigner la Musique (Lyon, France). His book Percussion et musique contemporaine has been published by the Editions Klincksieck (Paris) in 1991. En 1994 he obtained his Doctorate at the University Paris VIII (title of the thesis : « The Creative Performer »). In 1990, he was appointed by the French Ministry of Culture, Director of the CEFEDEM Rhône-Alpes, a center devoted to the training of future music school’s teachers. In 1992, he joined the contemporary music ensemble Aleph, Paris. This ensemble play a season’s concert at the Théâtre Dunois in Paris since 1990, and has toured extensively (New York, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C., Beijing, Shangaï, Dresden, Berlin, Amsterdam Gaudeamus Festival, Festival Manca in Nice, Musiques en Scène, Lyon, Bratislava, Lubjana, Vienna, Alicante, Madrid, Bath, London, Finland, Torino, Milano, Caracas, Venezuela, etc.). He is a member of PFL Traject.
