y: Curriculum en anglais

Daniel Thomas, curriculum en anglais

Daniel Dominique René Thomas was born in Lausanne in Switzerland in 1959.

He studied at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lausanne at the same time as the Conservatory of Music. He is as well a self-taught painter.

He obtained a Bachelor of Arts (Greek, Latin and Philosophy) in 1984, with a dissertation on the Goddess of the Night and her Family in Hesiod’s Theogony. Since then he has studied and speaks numerous European languages and continues to study the literature of various European cultures.

In 1992 he obtained a prise in virtuosity for organ in the Conservatory of Lausanne.
He is now the titular organist of the Abbey of Montheron, near Lausanne and of the swedisch church in the priory of Pully.

He studied painting especially in the museums of London, where he lived for one year in 1980-1, and particularly in the British Museum. His paintings are shown regularly in Switzerland since 1983. These include « forest compositions », « passing melodies, » « Instants of looking, » in oil or acrylics, and can be compared with his musical compositions and improvisations.

He has given organ recitals in many European countries, notably Sweden, as well as in Mexico.
In his concerts, besides his repertory, he improvises music inspired by natural phenomenons: landscapes, mountains, lakes, water-games, flowers, birds, portraits.

At present (in 1998) he is studying composition and improvisation with Jaap Zwaart, in Holland, and studies music for chimes in the Dutch school for bell ringers in Amersfoort. He plays the chimes in Chantemerle in Pully near Lausanne.

He improvises also on the piano for the theater and radio (like a performance « jeux de fables », song and piano).

Démarche artistique Daniel Thomas

Research on the langage of the human being, in its essential unity, its way of expression, from its wild voice before the articulate speech, to the drawing on the walls of the grottes, to the words throwed in front of the world, to the shouted or sung sounds,to the rythms of the wild percussions.

In different forms, in other perceptions but yet with certain constants,identical, commun elements of contrast, relief, nuanciation, rythmic, articulation, stand out in these human langages.

A central element of unity of languages is the gesture : the gesture of arms, of hands in drawing, the gesture of the fingers, of the body in playing piano, the gesture of the lips, the tongue the respiration in speaking, the gestures in dancing. There are estonishing correspondances between these different gestures.

Work on musical writing and on improvisation in relation with perceptions coming from the universe, natural phenomens, living beings: a setting in resonance, in sounds yielding images, of beings like a mountain in its spectacular and mysterious presence, like the water in its infinite variations of shade, sounds, rythms, a setting in resonance of beings like the human person, portrait of this unbound, unknown space of the other facing you.

Improvisations with sonorous conglomerates and rythmical contrasts in correspondance with elements perceived in the sky, in the light, throught the eyes, inscribed in the memory. Improvisations on animals met with their so strange, other, non-human presence.

In practice, organ or piano recitals, or both, or also with other instruments (carillon, bells, gongs, birdcalls, various percussions) alone or in dialogue with a painter, a writer, an actor or a singer (improvisations in creativ communion with paintings or texts).