Department of Music Lecture: Alexandre Pierrepont, founder of The Bridge
"Young at Heart, Wise in Time – Creative Music Through Post-Modern Times."
Alexandre Pierrepont is an anthropologist whose work focuses on Patrick Chamoiseau’s concept of “diversalité”, from poetics to politics full circle, and on the phenomena of “double consciousness” and internal otherness in Western societies – more specifically on African-American music as an alternative social institution – Alexandre Pierrepont spends his time between North America and France, between different “jazz worlds” and the academia. He strives to open channels of communication, on the field, between the universes of scientific research and musical or socio-musical experimentation.
After a PhD on the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM, based in Chicago and New York), prepared in the U.F. Anthropologie, ethnologie et science des religions (Anthropology, Ethnology, and Science of Religions Department) at the Université Paris 7 – Denis Diderot, and defended at the Université Paris 5 – Sorbonne (2007), followed by a post-doctorate in the Philosophy Department at the McGill University in Montréal (2014), Alexandre Pierrepont is now a research associate at CANTHEL in the College of Human and Social Sciences at Université Paris 5 – Sorbonne and CERILAC in the Literature, Arts, Cinema Department at Université Paris 7 – Denis Diderot, as well as in the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI), based in Canada.
Since the mid-2000s, he teaches in the Literature, Arts, Cinema Department at Université Paris 7 – Denis Diderot and in the Sciences Po – Paris Undergraduate College. He also gives lectures in the French Cultural Studies at the Columbia-Penn Program, in Paris, in the Center for Jazz for Jazz Studies at the Columbia University in New York, and at the University of Chicago – Center in Paris, most notably in the Department of Political Science, Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture.
An artistic director and educational programs manager for several festivals (among which Blanlieues Bleues from 1999 to 2009, and Sons d’hiver since 2003) and jazz and improvised music record labels, Alexandre Pierrepont was associate curator for several institutions, chief among them the Bleu Indigo series which was held in the Musée du quai Branly from 2009 to 2013, but also for the project “Beyond Black – De Bamako à Chicago, de Chicago à Royaumont” by Nicole Mitchell and Ballaké Sissoko, at the Fondation Royaumont (October 2014), and for the “Chicago à Paris” focus and 50th anniversary of the AACM at the Théâtre du Châtelet, as part of the Festival d’Automne (October 2015). He also worked with the Centre Culturel Suisse, the Cité de la musique, the Dynamo de Pantin, the Atlantique Jazz Festival, the Festival des Champs-Elysées, the Mona Bismarck Foundation for American Culture, or the Rendez-vous Contemporains de Saint-Merry.
Since 2012, Alexandre Pierrepont is the artistic director of the French-American exchange program The Bridge, which brings together several dozens of musicians of the jazz field, numerous clubs, festivals, and concert venues, as well as several academic institutions on both continents. This program is supported by the Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, the Ministère de l’Education Nationale, the Institut Français, the cultural services of the United States of America Embassy in Paris, the University of Chicago, the DePaul University, and the Roosevelt University in Chicago.
A member of the editorial committees of L’Art du jazz and Multitudes, co-publisher of the biannual and bilingual publication Les Tisserands / The Weavers – creative writing about creative music, from 2001 to 2009, supervisor of the publication Secteur Jazz, the journal of the Banlieues Bleues’ outreach programs, from 2001 to 2009, Alexandre Pierrepont regularly publishes articles in the music press (Jazz Magazine, Improjazz, Jazz Etcetera, Musica Falsa, Peace Warriors et Point of Departure), as well as in numerous scientific or political publications. He has organized several forums and symposiums around on issues related to the intersection of artistic and social issues, the in-between-worlds position that is typical of the African-American experience of the world, and of our “post-modernity.”
He is the author of “Le Champ jazzistique” (Éditions Parenthèses, 2002) and “La Nuée - l’Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM): un jeu de société musicale” (Éditions Parenthèses, 2015), as well as the co-editor, with Philippe Carles, of a contemporary history of jazz and creative music: “Polyfree – La jazzosphère, et ailleurs (1970-2015)” (Éditions Outre Mesure, 2016). He frequently collaborates with improvisers on projects which associate poetry and music in an original fashion, the accounts of which can be found on the albums “Maison Hantée” co-produced with Mike Ladd (Rogue Art label, 2008), “Passages” co-produced with Didier Petit (Rogue Art label, 2012), “De Fortune” with the Bonadventure Pencroff ensemble (MZ Records, 2014), “Traités et accords” with Denis Fournier (Vent du Sud, 2016), and “Wrecks” with the Third Coast Ensemble (Rogue Art label, 2017).
This event is co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities, American Culture Studies, Jazz at Holmes, and International and Area Studies.
The Bridge #2.2 – experimental residencies have been made possible through the Jazz & New Music, a program of FACE Foundation, in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States.
