Philippe Bodin is a square. Ill-at-ease with the real world, he aims at becoming a Platonic solid by concentrating inward and thus achieving some sort of three-dimensionality (or more if the spirit of Calabi-Yau is with him). Helped by his myopia, his short attention span and armed with three chords, he plunges into his inner world and submits his various sources of inspiration — such as the poetry of Henri Michaux, 1960s jazz, the procedures of the Burgundian and Franco-Flemish schools or those of African music — to ‘pataphysical manipulations in order to obtain a music simultaneously highly personal and strangely universal. Or so he hopes.
His work, recognized with awards and grants from the Lutoslawski International Competition (Warsaw, Poland, 2005), the Homage to Mozart Competition (Moscow, Russia, 2006), the Mario Bernardo Angelo-Comneno Competition (Rome, Italy, 2006), and the American Music Center; has been commissioned by the Barlow Endowment, the Orkest de Volharding, the Da Capo Chamber Players, Electra, the Eroica, Mojave, Mannes, and Kungsbacka trios, the Chamber Ensemble Left Coast, and the Utah Arts Festival.
Recent performances include Los Angeles´ Monday Evening Concerts, the Asia Pacific Festival, St. Luke´s Second Helpings, the Brave New Works Festival, the Las Vegas Music Festival, and the American Composers Orchestra 2007 Underwood Readings.
After a recent performance, LA Weekly declared him "an original composer with something important to say", while the LA Times thought he had "...substance, but less originality of voice." Who knows?
Prior to his incarnation as a composer in America, Philippe studied mathematics and physics, architecture, piano and organ in his native France, and had a career as an operatic baritone under the batons of Myung-Whun Chung, Philippe Herreweghe and Marc Minkovski.
click here for a professional biography (pdf format)