Claudine Simon
Artist, Pianist
About
© Sebastien Jourdan
Claudine Simon is a pianist, artist, improviser and performer. She has engaged in sound creation work with choreographers, composers and stage directors alike. She defines her practice as being about establishing links and relations between our sensibilities, our perceptions as well as between our manual and emotional skills.
Claudine was trained by Jean-Francois Heisser, Marie-Josèphe Jude and Pierre-Laurent Aimard at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris where she got to meet various people that have nourished her musical path.
Whether as a soloist or as a chamber musician, she regularly performs in many different venues in France: Opera de Lyon, La Roque d’Anthéron, l’Opéra Comique, Cité de la Musique, Hotel National des Invalides, festival de Tautavel d’Aix-en-Provence, Rencontres Artistiques de Bel Air, and also abroad (tours in India, China, Europe…).
Her personal relation to improvisation took shape during her studies at the Paris CNSMD and her training with Alain Savouret (generative improvisation course). Since then, her practice has been constantly enhanced by artistic exchanges with composers and improvisers with whom she frequently collaborates (Samuel Sighicelli, Elise Dabrowski, ensemble Op.cit, Jocelyn Mienniel…) and with fulfillment of projects of her own initiative.
Her work focuses on the creation of performances that allow her to question her relationship with the instrument. She conceived Pianomachine, an electromechanical device that intervenes in the heart of the piano, its structure, transforms its timbre, its lutherie, and questions its organism unity. The instrument was developed by the Sonopopée collective thanks to a commission from the GMEM-CNCM Marseille and gives rise to different forms, shows and concerts.
Pianomachine is a show combining musical, visual and choreographical research. By shaping the sound capacities of the instrument, she opens a new space of play which allows her to work in its margins, in its entrails and it is her own sound grammar which she can revisit and regenerate.