Jean-Jacques Perrey
Biography
Jean-Jacques Perrey (20 January 1929, Paris, France – 4 November 2016, Morges, Switzerland) was a French electronic music producer and was an early pioneer in the genre.
Perrey was studying medicine in Paris when he met Georges Jenny, the inventor of the Ondioline, a type of electronic keyboard. Quitting medical school, Perrey travelled through Europe demonstrating this precursor of the modern synthesizer. At the age of 30, Perrey relocated to New York, sponsored by Caroll Bratman, who built him an experimental laboratory and recording studio. Here he invented "a new process for generating rhythms with sequences and loops", utilizing the environmental sounds of "musique concrète." Befriending Robert Moog, he became one of the first Moog synthesiser musicians, creating "far out electronic entertainment". In 1965 Perrey met Gershon Kingsley, a former colleague of John Cage. Together, using Ondioline and Perrey's loops, they created two albums for Vanguard — The In Sound from Way Out (1966) and Kaleidoscopic Vibrations (1967). Perrey and Kingsley collaborated on sound design for radio and television advertising. Perrey returned to France, composing for television, scoring for ballet, and continuing medical research into therapeutic sounds for insomniacs.
Perrey's return from obscurity began in 1997, when he started recording in Bordeaux, France, with David Chazam.
In 2015–2016, Perrey became friends with Belgian-born Australian multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter Wouter de Backer (known professionally as Gotye). De Backer worked with Perrey to preserve his recorded legacy.
Works for Winds
- Baroque Hoedown (arr. Lavender) (1967/1991)
- Popcorn
Resources
- Jean-Jacques Perrey, Wikipedia Accessed 22 November 2018