01. Who are you ?
I am an interdisciplinary artist working with sound, paint, video, and text. While I have spent most of my professional life as a trained professional composer and educator, I am now devoted to making my art full-time.
02. What are you listening actually ?
My listening habits are (and have always been quite wide. I am quite fond of the music of John Cage, Morton Feldman, and many of the wandelweiser group. I also listen to Bjork, The Caretaker, William Basinski, Celer, loscil, Brian Eno, and on occasion, the Pet Shop Boys.
3. How you came to music ?
When I came home from school as a boy, my mom would have her children gather around her, and she would play the piano. It was not only ‘classical » music – though I very much remember her playing Haydn’s Gyspy Rondo (and quite wrongly I will add), and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. I loved the Beethoven piece so much that I decided one day to learn how to play – no teacher, no theory books, just associating each sound I knew with its representation on the page. It took a few months, but soon I was reading music and on my way to devoting my life to it.
She also played popular music and would sing the melodies – so I grew up feeling quite okay about singing! When I was 12 years old, I decided to play the clarinet, which I was devoted to for about a decade. I decided to be a composer after hearing a recording of Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps – I was riveted to think someone sat in front of blank paper and summoned up such a sound world – it still seems remarkable.
4. What gear do you use in studio/live ?
I am a huge Native Instruments fan – Reaktor and Kontakt in particular. Things are sequenced in either Abelton Live or an old product called Acid. I also use my field recordings as a part of my work – so I rely on my Zoom H5 quite a bit.
5. Do you have an anecdote or a memory to tell us about your music ?
I had my music played at an art installation a few years back (the speakers were all hidden so you couldn’t see where the sound was coming from) and one day, when I was in the gallery, a mom and her two children came. I heard the boy say to his mom – « mommy, listen, isn’t that beautiful? » It was a great feeling to know that perhaps my sound world inspired another future composer.
6. Which artist would you dream of working with?
I have been lucky to have already worked with artists I admire- John Cage, Morton Feldman, Milton Babbitt, and Michael Finnissy. But if I dig deep, I sometimes dream that Bjork calls me to collaborate on an opera.
7. What are your plans for the future?
There is more life behind me than in front of me. With whatever time I have left I want to live it joyously, creatively, and as life-filled as it can possibly be. I make art every day and just the other day, I took my clarinet out of storage – I want to get back to playing it again.
ARTIST LINKS
https://www.facebook.com/paulbeaudoinartist
instagram.com/paulbeaudoin
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf1lIPz2DQ1G99HRSjSNxuw
https://paulbeaudoin.bandcamp.com/
