When he eventually turned 36 and had composed about 80 pieces, had been on stage as a performer and an improvisor, and had started working on his composition PhD, Brice Catherin realised that music was less important than love. Therefore, he decided to dedicate himself to the latter and since then has been producing, in the form of consenting collaborations with his good friends, intermedia items (notably with the Noisebringers), art performances (with Ioannis Mandafounis), poetry (with Clea Chopard), visual art (with Mariabrice Sapphocatherin), but also stained glass (with Cynthia Udriot), various articles (for The Mass) and a jazz album (with Sam Eastmond), since he is still a funny noise making cellist when asked kindly. In this respect, he is honoured to be a veteran of the improvising ensembles Insub Meta Orchestra (CH) and Union Division (UK). He lives in Geneva.
Since May 2024, Brice Catherin is an affiliate artist of the UNESCO chair on refugee integration through education, language and arts of the University of Glasgow.
(rumour)
In January 2007 during a basketball match involving her son, Michèle Pralong met Brice Catherin who was the referee. She explained to him that she had 'loved his performance as a referee' which she found 'extravagant and sober' and that she wanted to hire him for a series of ten concerts and musical performances at the Théâtre du Grütli (Geneva, Switzerland), which she had just started co-directing. Catherin informed her that he did not know at all how to play music and was not at all interested in art, but Pralong explained that it was a 'bluff' that the directors wanted to try. Given the platitude and the lack of imagination of the local musical scene, she wished to kick the anthill by creating an experimental musician out of scratch. At first bewildered, Catherin finally accepted. Without any preparation at all, a few months later (September 2007), he found himself with a cello in his hand (an instrument whose name he had hardly known before), together with a real dancer, Foofwa d'Imobilité, and a real singer, Édmée Fleury. Ten performances followed (until June 2008) with a number of professional artists during the whole season of the théâtre du Grütli. The audience and the critics were perplexed but the bluff worked so well that a number of institutions and festivals, impressed by Catherin's CV (the théâtre du Grütli went as far as buying a fake letter of recommendation from the real composer Michael Jarrell) hired him: festival Archipel, festival de la Bâtie, Villa Bernasconi, Théâtre de l'Usine, MAMCO, théâtre de la Traverse, Festival Fureur de Lire in Geneva, Centre Pompidou in Paris and the théâtre de l'L in Brussels. The latter even appointed Catherin artist in residence for two years. Obviously, each of these institutions realised the trick after each performance, which eventually got him banned from all the stages of French speaking countries. Having developed a taste for the stage, Catherin played this card in the rest of Europe, Japan and Canada. Last gamble to date: he decided in 2017 to apply for a composition PhD in the UK and even received a prestigious grant, and completing his diploma in 2020.