Martin Matalon, born in Buenos Aires in 1958, studied at the Juilliard School of New York where he obtained a Master’s Degree in composition. In 1989, his chamber opera The Secret Miracle, based on a novel by Jorge-Luis Borges, was produced at the Festival of Avignon. In the same year, having been introduced to orchestral conducting with Jacques-Louis Monod, he founded Music Mobile, an ensemble dedicated to contemporary music based in New York. In 1993, having moved permanently to Paris, Matalon worked for the first time with IRCAM and also on La Rosa Profunda, music intended for the exhibition organised by the Pompidou Centre on “The World of the Borgias”. IRCAM has commissioned a new score from him for the restored version of Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis. After this considerable work, he immersed himself in the world of Luis Buñuel, writing two scores in succession for two mythical films by the Spanish film director: Las Siete Vidas de un Gato, for Un Chien Andalou (1996), which, when orchestrated, became El Torito Catalan, created in 2001, and Le Scorpion (for 6 percussion instruments, two pianos and real-time electronic system).
His repertoire also includes a large number of chamber music pieces, including Formas de Arena for flute, viola and harp, and Lineas de Agua for an octet of cellos. Launched in 1997, the Série des Trames, a work on the border between concerto for solo instrument and chamber music, was for the composer a kind of “personal diary of composition”. He was composer in residence for the Orchestre National de Lorraine during 2003-2004. This joint work between the composer, the orchestra and its leader Jacques Mercier, led to the composition of two orchestral works, one of which is a kind of “young person’s guide to the orchestra”.
Like ten or so other composers, Martin Matalonhas written for the CENTQUATRE a piece lasting precisely 104 seconds, a commission involving a fascinating combination of figures and constraints. These compositions will be accessible on line to enable you to discover different and distant universes in the field of contemporary music, all too often reserved for initiates only. They will then be performed in the CENTQUATRE after it opens.
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