Kasper T. Toeplitz is a French composer and musician of Polish origin, born in 1960. He lives in Paris.
Biography
He has worked with academic research organizations, such as GMEM, GRM, IRCAM, and Radio-France, as well as with experimental musicians, such as Éliane Radigue, Zbigniew Karkowski, Dror Feiler, Tetsuo Furudate, Phill Niblock and Art Zoyd . Citing Giacinto Scelsi and Iannis Xenakis as influences, his early work was mostly written for traditional instruments. He received several prizes and distinctions for these works: 1st prize in composition for orchestra at the festival of Besançon, 1st prize in the Opéra Autrement/Acanthes competition, Villa Médicis Hors-les-Murs in New York, prize Léonard de Vinci in San Francisco, Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto, and DAAD in Berlin. He has also written for his electric guitar orchestra, Sleaze Art. He then integrated computers into his work, via the programming language MAX.
His experimentation with computers continued, in 2003, with the creation of an instrument he calls the BassComputer, an electric bass with 5 fretted strings and 4 unfretted strings, as in the harp guitar. The instrument is intended to be interfaced with a computer. In 2004, he commissioned a piece from Eliane Radigue called Elemental II, which he interpreted for the BassComputer. This was an opportunity for him to set up his own label, ROSA (Recordings Of Sleaze Art). He later commissioned Phil Niblock’s Yam almost may (Touch Records TO59), and Dror Feiler’s Ousia. He also recorded Capture, one of his own compositions, on ROSA (Rosa#2, 2005), as well as ZKT, by Le Dépeupleur, a laptop duet, formed with Zbigniew Karkowski, and which has been together since 1999 (Rosa#3, 2006).
He has also written for dance (Myriam Gourfink, Loic Touzé, Olivia Granville, Emmanuelle Huynh, Hervé Robbe, Artefact, Christian Trouillas, Jean-Marc Matos), as well as theatre; he has always shown a great interest in literature (J'irai vers le nord, j'irai dans la nuit polaire, his first opera, was based on Sylvia Plath's texts, as was Great Expectations on Kathy Acker's texts; Ruine was composed on a François Bon text), and more recently he has developed "combined" pieces, mixing light and/or video images (K_apture, for computer solo, on Dominik Barbier's videos).
In 2007 he created, with Eryck Abecassis and Wilfried Wendling, KERNEL, a computer ensemble devoted to interpretation, live stricto sensu (without any samples or sequences), of electronic music compositions.
Press
About The Deep, a piece written by Kasper T. Toeplitz for KERNEL in 2008, Dan Warburton, for Paris Transatlantic Magazine : "The Deep is the latest composition - and we're definitely talking composition here: you can even check out the score online at the sleazeart website, and very interesting it is too - by Kasper Toeplitz for KERNEL, his laptop trio with Eryck Abecassis and Wilfried Wendling. There's plenty of information about the group and their instrumentation (i.e. software, for the most part) at the sleazeart site, but no amount of background reading and scrutiny of KTT's pdfs (you'll need a smattering of French) can prepare you for the impressive 59'33" of The Deep. Since Paul D. Miller and his chums made Xenakis suddenly hip a few years back, far too many musicians have been quick to claim some kind of Xenakis street cred, but very few compositions pack the clout of Bohor or La Légende d'Eer. Happy to report that The Deep is one of them. Toeplitz has a real feel not only for the large form - which is not simply a question of taking a short form and stretching it out: ask Eliane Radigue, who worked closely with KTT on the realisation of her Elemental II back in 2004 - but for the surface and texture of the sounds he and his playing partners choose to articulate it. Any self-respecting fan of Xenakis, Radigue or EAI for that matter (putting any anti-composer prejudice aside) should check this splendid work out at the earliest opportunity."