Compositeur, réalisation électroacoustique
After studying science and music in Paris and Bordeaux, Christophe Havel chose to settle in Bordeaux, where he plays an active role in musical life, in particular with Proxima Centauri, of which he is a founding member and co-artistic director, and with Scrime (Studio de Création et de Recherche en Informatique et en Musique Electroacoustique), of which he was artistic director from 2011 to 2013. From 1991 to 2021 he taught electroacoustic composition at the Conservatoire of Bordeaux.
In his first instrumental works: Oxyton (1991), Omotesis (1991), RamDam (1992), his highly expressive writing reflects the mark of the electroacoustic experience both in the work on the sound material - particularly in the detail of the morphological writing - and in the use of new technologies at the various stages of the work's development. His work often combines an instrumental device with a live electroacoustic device, as in S (1994), which won 1st prize at the 6th Braunschweig Electroacoustic Composition Competition in 1995.
In response to the highly expressive character of his early works, he has turned his attention to the composition of dynamic structures in which harmonic and rhythmic materials play a dominant role and play an active part in the formal dynamics, giving the works of this period - IT! (1998), ÆR [la danse] (1994) and cinetic (2000). More recently, his approach has focused on the use of a gestural grammar that allows the sound phenomenon to be understood in its entirety: Dissidences (2008-13), Eden (2009), XX (2010), XY (2010), whether in an instrumental or electronic situation.
In his series of metamorphoses, which began in 2000, he developed a style that brought together the instrumentalist and the computer in open structures using essentially synthetic sounds. With this in mind, he initiated research at Scrime into the capture of the percussionist's gesture. In 2004 he was appointed associate researcher at LaBRI (Laboratoire Bordelais de Recherche en Informatique).
His career as a composer and electroacoustic musician has been accompanied by a range of teaching experiences. From 1994 to 1998 he taught contemporary musical aesthetics at Cefedem, and from 1999 to 2004 he was a teacher in musical acoustics at the Musicology Department of the University of Bordeaux III. From 2004 to 2011 he was a member of the teaching staff at Musikene, the Higher School of Music of the Basque Country in San Sebastian. In 2003 he was appointed professor of composition at the Escuela Superior de Música de Catalunya in Barcelona (esmuc), where he taught until 2023.