2012 - the bristophone - ostrich
2012 - New Voices - Public Voices
2011 and 2012 - after Bestué and Vives
2010 to 2014 - The trilogy for cello and free ensemble
2010 - My piece with something like hope in the end
2009 - Opus 40 centimetres
2007 - Aus den Sieben Tagen - Oben und Unten
2005 - Soirée 69 et play stations

Even the least possibly democratic artistic dictator that might exist would be sometimes forced to notice that he gets along well with another artist. When the getting along is reciprocal, there is only one solution left: to form a duet. The duet allows to marry, confront and feed two aesthetics. These marriages and confrontations have most of the time less to do with the sum of the two artists' aesthetics than with a complex and intuitive alchemy where unexpected and marvellous artistic creatures arise from. And this is cool.

Bristophe

Bristophe, the duet of Brice Catherin and Christophe Schweizer, contains potentially all the musics of the Universes, and has its own website here.

BriCo

Corina Pia and I first met as spectators of each other’s work. The idea of working together popped up in our minds at the same time without prior consultation. Quite quickly we found out that we could conceive our works either through discussion ("if I propose this, what do you think? what do you propose in return? Could you imagine this or that?"), either by a system of reciprocal cartes blanches ("here is what I give you, answer in a way that suits you"), as our aesthetics are proved to be compatible and our understanding of each other intuitive and immediate.

This way of working leads to diverse results: videos, a sonic show in aroma-scope, a danced and played show called En Herbe, and another collaboration with trapeze artist Jusitne Bernachon, KĀĀFKĀĀ.

Each show must be in a state of permanent evolution, a field of experimentation, a subtle balance between butō dance, alter-baroque costumes, an instrumentarium alternately traditional (the cello), weird (birdcalls, toys), and contemporary (the electronic), a dialogue - would it be of the deaf - with smells, pictures, spectacular and non-spectacular, the fall, the elevation… It is not as much an underlying concept (narrative, artistic) as a pure aesthetic care and an intuitive and virtuoso mastering of its diverse ingredients that make BriCo a strange and penetrating duet.

A first extract of the premiere of En Herbe in Geneva.	A second extract of the premiere of En Herbe in Geneva.
A first extract of En Herbe in Lausanne.	A second extract of En Herbe in Lausanne.

Selected bites from a mediumnistic visit at the MAMCO on the 25th of November 2012 with Mazen Kerbaj.

With the trapeze artist Justine Bernachon, BriCo also premiered KĀĀFKĀĀ, a show that goes like this:

One needs a solemn, serious and badly dressed musician, like all musicians really are. One needs a superficial, showing off trapeze artist wearing a g-string full of glitter, like all the trapeze artists really are and do. One adds to the first fantasy, curiosity, and a taylor-made super-class costume. One adds to the second profundity, poetry, and a tailor-made rococo costume. One lets this simmer for a long time.

A very long time.

One finally obtains a unique show, in which the trapeze becomes dance, the dance incantation, the incantation exhilaration. Just like if Kafka had offered himself a thirty years butoh workshop in Okinawa with the circus Knie.

KĀĀFKĀĀ is the fruit of the encounter between three artists; Brice Catherin, Justine Bernachon and Corina Pia. The show has been built by three equal voices, with intuition and groping, in order to find the best way to marry three different aesthetics from three different artists and disciplines (music, circus and dance). The purpose was not make one prevail over the other, without erasing them, but make them them react together so as to create a new strange and surprising artistic object.

The trailer of KĀAFKĀĀ, premiered at the "festival de la Bātie 2011" at the Villa Bernasconi (Lancy, Switzerland).

KĀĀFKĀĀ
by Boris Meister.

Edmond et Catherine

"Edmond et Catherine" is an improvisors’ duet. Edmond is mainly a singer and Catherine mostly plays the cello. Edmond et Catherine can stand on a small stage, but also on a bike or in an elevator. Edmond et Catherine produces a free, colourful and voluble music, the result of the improbable but nontheless fascinating mariage between a self-educated painter and a pure conservatory product with a lot of hair.

Edmond is performed by Edmée Fleury and Catherine by Brice Catherin.

Spokes for the wheel of Torment, clip by Syd Garon, with Brice Catherin, cello, Edmée Fleury, voice, and Jean Rochat, percussions.	Hell Dream clip by Jim Dirschberger, with Brice Catherin, cello, Edmée Fleury, voice, and Jean Rochat, percussions..
Dans le living-room de ma tante, clip by Amélie Gagnot, with Brice Catherin, cello, Edmée Fleury, voice, and Jean Rochat, percussions.	I can be a frog, clip by George Salisbury, with Brice Catherin, cello, Edmée Fleury, voice, and Jean Rochat, percussions.

Selected bites from the mediumnistic visit of the MAMCO on the 16th of September 2012.

Edmond et Catherine at the MAMCO (sept.2012) by Christoph Hamm	Edmond et Catherine at the MAMCO (sept.2012) by Christoph Hamm	Edmond et Catherine at the MAMCO (sept.2012) by Christoph Hamm	Edmond et Catherine at the MAMCO (sept.2012) by Christoph Hamm
Edmond et Catherine at the MAMCO (sept.2012) by Christoph Hamm	Edmond et Catherine at the MAMCO (sept.2012) by Christoph Hamm	Edmond et Catherine at the MAMCO (sept.2012) by Christoph Hamm

Brice Catherin
autoportrait
made-up by Edmée Fleury.

Edmond et Catherine
at theVilla Bernasconi
by Dylan Perrenoud.

Lucie Mauch and Brice Catherin

Lucie Mauch and I met as students at the Lausanne Conservatory, whose contemporary music department’s cataclysmic incompetence has been proven many times. We could nonetheless practise there with a benevolent professor (may he be thanked here) Morton Feldman's patterns in a chromatic fiels which later turned out to be "too long" to be programmed at a concert… dedicated to Feldman.

After this comment whose crass stupidity will not fail to trigger incredulous laughters to generations and generations of music lovers, we performed this piece elsewhere, three times over the years.

Our common taste for minimal music in its finest, uncluttered, overwhelming aspects, very logically brought us to perform a John Cage marathon (more than six hours of music!). Entirely composed of his late pieces, the number pieces, either for our instruments (the piano, the cello and the electronic), either in transcriptions we made. This marathon had a huge success and we are happy to be part of the very rare category of musicians in the world who dare devote themselves to such a particular and magnificent repertoire.

Beside this we have extended our repertoire to other pieces sharing the same characteristics of fineness and purity, such as Galina Ustovloskaya's Grand Duo, Anton Webern's 3 pičces opus 11, and Franz Liszt's late pieces, among others.

The beginning of Two2 by John Cage, for two pianos.

The beginning of Two5 by John Cage, for cello and piano.

The last of the 3 pieces opus 11 by Anton Webern.

The fourth movement of the Grand Duo, by Galina Ustvolskaya.

La lugubre gondola by Franz Liszt.

The beginning of patterns in a chromatic field by Morton Feldman.

Patterns in a chromatic field,
by Ibn al Rabin

Another poster
by Ibn Al Rabin.