Alice Orpheus is a French composer and songwriter.
After studying classical music as a violinist at a small conservatory, gypsy jazz with Django Reinhard’s, receiving two Conservatory gold medals and studying philosophy and Art history at the Sorbonne in Paris, Alice entered the prestigious New England Conservatory in Boston (MA) as a classical musician and jazz composer.
There, he established his musical foundations: program music.
While in the U.S., he also immersed himself in black American gospel churches and sketchy blues bars. This is where he fostered the ever present soul of his music which often drives the emotional narrative in his writing.
As a composer, Alice draws on the desire to undo, deconstruct and play with the melody as his mentors Hankus Netsky, Ran Blake and Paul Bley once did. And paramount is the notion of fully developing a motif, as mastered by Debussy, Cecyl Taylor, or Stravinsky among many.
After 20 years of conservatory training, being mentored, countless soul,jazz and classical music concerts, performing in a trio with Bob Moses, in duo with Blake, recording with the experimental jazz scene in Boston, playing in Indie bars, getting lost in whiskey competitions and Bluegrass evenings, leading masterclasses in universities like NYU, touring with renown violist Martha Katz, Alice retreated to New Zealand and started his independent exploration of pop and 19th century orchestral music.
Even during this semi-retirement, he remained connected to the music world and obtained a post as a songwriting professor at the University of Auckland and his first private commission as a composer.
During that time, he explored repetitive, minimalist music and Frank recordings.
When he returned to France, Alice took a break from classical composing aside from songwriting – while he concentrated on a new and important subject: electronic music. He meets the DJ, deep house producer Master-H, with whom he recorded the first of three tracks for his label, Komplex de Deep. Thanks to this experience he realized that self-production was an essential tool for a songwriter and becoming more and more important for a composer.
When he returned to France, Alice took a break from classical composing aside from songwriting – while he concentrated on a new and important subject: electronic music. He meets the DJ, deep house producer Master-H, with whom he recorded the first of three tracks for his label, Komplex de Deep. Thanks to this experience he realized that self-production was an essential tool for a songwriter and becoming more and more important for a composer.
For several years, Alice Orpheus presented himself as an artist (when he was invited by Gilles Peterson to the Worldwide Festival) and as an artistic director (for the Anglo-Nigerian producer/rapper Ekiti Sound). He has also worked as a songwriter for Gérald Toto (signed by No Format), as a songwriter and singer for Epic Empire (signed by Sony Music), and director for young artists like Silda.
He taught songwriting and composing at Cours Florent Music in Paris until 2021. Over those years, it is a Cours Florent that he creates and opens the first methodology class.
In recent years, his composing work has intensified. He has been commissioned by private patrons, cities like Chevilly-Larue where he served as composer in residence from 2019 to 2020, and luxury brands like Goyard in 2021, but he has continued filling his life with researching a crossroad of influences and musical mixtures.
In 2019, Alice’s compositional vocabulary truly started to expand and take shape. In the piece, Electric Birds, Steve Reich’s lesson was well learned as it is the first time Alice uses a of pre-recorded tape as material for live performances. Repetitive minimal and other musical influences also started to become a clearer part of his style.
With Affinité électives, he invoked Schoenberg’s serial music and used a technique which has become a central part of his work, known as the prepared Midi keyboard. On the docks and Without Care both approach the modal world and question the concept of uniqueness within a work.
Alice describes this in his writing Invitation, an open reflection on his music. From certain pieces emerged precise themes that were developed using different formats. Without care, San Francisco Enraged, Eviction and 2084 are set between society hard to comprehend and the arrival of a dystopian world which is more realistic than we would like to believe.
Alice Orpheus’ most recent composition Fears pieces written for violin and pre-recorded tape, and his newest project surrounding the works of Japanese American sculpture, Isamu Noguchi both incorporate the idea of abstract narratives.