About
Biography & vision
Sylvain Monchocé is a multi-instrumentalist improviser playing the flutes, saxophones, gayageum and the daegeum.
Interested in "musique concrète instrumentale", he developed unique extended techniques for each one of his instruments, producing sounds that are in between electronics and acoustic, with a special interest in breathing granular sounds, multiphonics, overtones and silence.
Playing mostly free improvised musique, he also plays the contemporary and classical music flute repertoire. He performed in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Denmark, Poland, Canada, South Korea and Japan. He plays with Bart Maris, Andrea Tonero, Paula Sanchez, Jacek Chmiel, Daniel Studer, Christian Moser, and performs with the dancer Abigail Aleksander as well as in the duo Yeosyl with the dancer Han Yeonji.
He studied the flute at the Mons conservatory in Belgium in the class of Marc Grauwels and specialized in contemporary music with Helen Bledsoe, Mike Schmid and Wil Offermans. He studied free improvisation at the Musik Akademie Basel, with Alfred Zimmerlin, Andrea Neumann and Fred Frith. Interested also in dance and movement, he studied dance improvisation with Han Yeonji, butoh with Susanne Daeppen and followed masterclasses with Harald Kimmig and Atsushi Takenouchi. He also followed workshops given by Thomas Hauert, Maya Carroll as well as the 5 weeks intensive workshop of David Zambrano.
Besides his musical studies and work, he also holds an engineering degree in Optics, a master in Physics and a PhD in Plasma Physics and Attosecond science.
