Now a unique French exemplar of what in the U.S. might be called classical/world music crossover, Hughes de Courson has consistently sought to broaden the scope of his musical abilities and activities over the course of his distinguished five-decade career. He spent his early childhood in Spain. While still in school, de Courson was writing songs with classmate Patrick Modiano, and some of them were later recorded by the durable French pop-rock vocalist Françoise Hardy. In 1973 de Courson and Gabriel Yacoub formed the group Malicorne, a folk-oriented act influenced by Steeleye Span and by the contemporaneous revival in the folk music of the ethnically Celtic French region of Brittany. Later de Courson formed his own label, Ballon Noir (Black Balloon), issuing discs by Dan Ar Bras, Kolinda, and others. In the 1980s he expanded his own composition endeavors, writing music primarily for modern dance presentations. The winner of a French Foreign Ministry stipend in 1992, de Courson undertook a three-year journey around the Mediterranean basin, immersing himself in the traditional music of various countries and creating new compositions. One of these was an oratorio, Yam, for an ensemble of 150 mixed Arabic and classical musicians; the work was performed in Nazareth and Jerusalem. His Nouba Beshtakeïa was presented by the Cairo Opera. In the middle and late 1990s, de Courson pursued new classical-international fusions. He found a new collaborator in the Franco-Argentine producer and composer Tomas Gubitsch, with whom he worked on the 1994 disc Lambarena: Bach to Africa, and on 1999's Songs of Innocence, which fused songs and instrumental performances by children around the world with music for symphony orchestra. De Courson gained increasingly greater renown as a result of performances at huge festivals in culturally vibrant Marseille and elsewhere. Mozart in Egypt (1997), which combined Mozart's famous melodies with Middle Eastern and Asian sounds, was followed by a second volume in 2005. The 2008 compilation Babel demonstrated the cultural diversity and inventiveness of de Courson's music. Hughes de Courson has continued to create unique music in which France meets the rest of the world. ~ Rovi Staff, Rovi

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Hughes De Courson

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