Guest Speaker: Joël Bons
Guest Expert: François Picard (Sorbonne University – IReMus)
Moderator: LIAO Lin-Ni (TPMC – IReMus)
Co-production: TPMC - Ircam STMS Lab
Supported by: DRAC Île-de-France and IReMus
Zoom Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88414446442?pwd=HUdP2WlSpybSl7MeCm3oW9A3Xie23d.1#success
ID: 884 1444 6442 / Code: 467520
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Joël Bons and the Mouth Organ
The Historical Context
The 1990s were a pivotal decade, marked by the arrival of Chinese composers in Europe and an unprecedented curiosity regarding their traditional instruments. This period represented a true "historical call" in France, where the encounter between contemporary writing and Chinese instrument making — particularly that of the sheng — opened up new aesthetic paths, driven by institutions such as Royaumont, Radio France, the Ensemble 2e2m, and the CNSMDP etc. Ethnomusicologist François Picard will revisit this founding context. It is in this wake that Joël Bons, a major figure in the introduction of these repertoires to the West, developed his conviction: the future of music lies in the convergence of cultures.
Joël Bons: Possibilities for integrating musicians and instruments from different cultures in new compositions
Over the years, I became convinced that the future of (art) music lies in the mutual influence and convergence of different musical cultures. In 2002, I founded the intercultural Atlas Ensemble, bringing together musicians from China, Japan, India, Iran, Armenia, Azerbaidjan, Syria, Turkey and Europe. The ensemble presents an unheard sound world of instruments from different cultures and aims to create new forms of orchestration in a transcultural idiom.
In this presentation, I will focus on composing for the Chinese and Japanese mouths organs, sheng and shō, in different intercultural combinations. With examples from my pieces Tour à Tour (2006), Nomaden (2015-16) and Atlas Orchestra (2023-2025), I will illustrate various compositional approaches and strategies. In these works, the instruments are used in various combinations: as a solo instrument, in duo (sheng & cello), in unusual chamber music formations (2 shengs, trombone, percussion), as soloist in a large ensemble, or as chords instruments in tutti’s and chorales.
The map of both instruments is exceptional: the bamboo pipes are arranged in a circle in such a way, that they meet the specific musical requirements for which these instruments were traditionally intended. For the shō, these are the traditional chords used in Gagaku court music; the construction of the sheng evolved, from the 17-pipe version suitable for traditional pentatonic Chinese music (often using parallel fifths), to fully chromatic variants with many more pipes, resulting in a more complex layout.
The unique construction of these instruments inspired me to freely experiment with possible fingerings, from which various musical ideas emerged. In collaboration with the performers, I thus made use of the hidden potentiality of fingering patterns, which are technically comfortable for the performer, but unusual and nontraditional. This is just one example of the compositional strategies employed that I will discuss.
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Joël Bons
Composer Joël Bons was born in Amsterdam. He studied guitar and composition in Amsterdam, Siena and Freiburg with Robert Heppener, Franco Donatoni and Brian Ferneyhough, but his musical background is diverse, influenced by his parents' unique World Music record collection, the Beatles, Frank Zappa, Igor Stravinsky, Pierre Boulez...
Compositions
Bons’ music has been performed by international top soloists, ensembles and orchestras. In 2016, the premiere of the large scale Nomaden was a highlight at festivals such as the Venice Biennale and Cello Biennale Amsterdam. Written for master cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and the intercultural Atlas Ensemble, this work won the 2019 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. The Award is often referred to as the ‘Nobel Prize of music’ by The New York Times The New York Times. Nomaden has been released on BIS Records.
Recent commissions include Thirty Situations for soprano, trombone, jazz drums, electric guitar and electronics and the Cello concerto Trailblazer commissioned and performed by the Residentie Orkest. Commissioned by Oranjewoud Festival, Joël Bons composed two series of works for the intercultural Atlas Ensemble: 283 Strings (2023) and 132 Guan (2024). On June 21, 2025, the large scale Atlas Orchestra was premiered, to great acclaim, at the Holland Festival/Zaterdagmatinee in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. It marked the debut of the Atlas Orchestra, an intercultural collective of 40 top musicians from diverse cultures founded by Bons.
Ensembles
Joël Bons co-founded the Nieuw Ensemble, was for ten years the group’s guitarist, and then became its artistic director, responsible for virtually all programming. He introduced a new generation of Chinese composers in 1991 to western audiences, which marked the international breakthrough of new Chinese music. In 1998, Bons and the Nieuw Ensemble were awarded the Cultuurfonds Musicprize for their ‘markedly lively and adventurous programming which can be described as ground breaking, both in the literal and figurative senses of the word'.
In 2002, Bons founded the Atlas Ensemble. For his work with the Atlas Ensemble, Joël Bons was granted the prestigious Amsterdam Prize for the Arts 2005. The same year, he became professor of composition at the Conservatory of Amsterdam, where he organized a yearly Atlas Academy, a laboratory for the creation of intercultural music. Bons has acquired a vast knowledge of non-western music(instruments) over the course of decades and build up a network of musicians at the highest level. In 2025 he created the Atlas Orchestra.
