Maximin, Berangere

No One Is An Island

Label: Sub Rosa Country: Belgium

"I eagerly seized the opportunity to work with these amazing four men. I loved that. Their wits and energies were just what I needed: a sonic journey that simultaneously develops intuition and teaches understanding, this among many other subtle effects. It certainly impacts on my way of listening, and therefore on the music I shall make in the future. My warm thanks go to them and also to those who not only offer drama, but who also can help keep on track and blossom."-Berangere Maximin

"Berangere Maximin was born on the remote French colonial island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean and moved to France at the age of fifteen. Performing first as a singer, she later studied electroacoustic music with the composer Denis Dufour at the Perpignan Conservatoire. Her first professional experiences occurred in Paris, and in 2002 she moved there permanently. From 2002 to 2007, whilst running the organisations Motus (concerts production and label, Paris) and Futura (International festival of Acousmatic Art, Crest, France) as the assistant of Denis Dufour, she started to work as an independent composer (collective concerts and audiovisual installations).

After the release of her debut album Tant Que Les heures Passent (As Long As The Hours Go By) on Tzadik Records (August 2008), she performed a series of pieces for live voice and laptop which continued to develop on the road. In the thirty-concert tour that followed in the USA, France and Italy, she shared the bill with strong personalities such as Christian Fennesz (Florence, Paris), James Blackshaw (St-Ouen), ZU (Vandoeuvre) and Fred Frith (Brest, Oakland, San Francisco).

At the beginning of 2011, Berangere Maximin completed a tour in the USA (eleven concerts in New York, DC, Philly, San Francisco, Oakland) and formed a double laptop duo with Chuck Bettis (Tzadik), 'Pretty Clicks'(first concerts in New York in February and March, and in France in September and October, 2011). Berangere Maximin has recently been included in the 2011 Residency Program Institut Français Hors Les Murs and spent two months in the USA (February and March) to write the libretto of Dora-Rose Hits New York, a piece for 4 actors and electronics (ongoing production, stage direction: Lionel Parlier)."-Sub Rosa