Zbinden: Homage – Giuseppe D’Amico

“Some people say I am a Neoclassical composer, for others I am a poet. I think I am both. The two principal aspects of my compositional work are the clarity of the elements I use and my systematical approach. […] I also try to write joyful music, as Mozart did in his Divertimenti and in numerous Finales of his Symphonies, because sadness, rigour and complexity are not the only distinguishing traits of a genius”. [Julien-François Zbinden]

Julien-François Zbinden began playing the piano at the age of seven under the guidance of Ernest Decosterd. Between 1934 and 1938 he attended the Ecole Normale of Lausanne and became a teacher there. He studied the piano with Gertrude S. Keller-Ching and Marie Panthès for two years. At the same time he was taught violin and singing by Charles Mayor and Henri Gerber. In 1938 he began his career as an orchestra pianist, and was passionate about jazz and everything new. His friendship with Pierre Dudan was particularly important as it resulted in his participation in the Ensemble Octojazzy. He was a self-taught student of harmony, musical form and composition, and he followed René Gerber’s courses of orchestration and counterpoint. In 1947 he was employed by Radio-Lausanne as an accompanist and musical director, and he cooperated with Jack Rollan in the preparation of the programme “Hello Broadcast Live”. From 1956 he was in charge of the musical section and in 1965 he was appointed vice-director of the musical programmes at Radio Suisse Romande (RSR). From 1973 to 1979 he was the President of the Association of the Swiss Musicians, and from 1978 to 1991 he was the President of SUISA (Swiss Copyright Society). In his capacity as a musician and sound engineer, he met musicians such as Igor Stravinsky, Arthur Honegger, Maurice Ravel, Sir Yehudi Menuhin, Martha Argerich, Alfred Cortot, Jacques Ibert, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Armin Jordan and others. Throughout his lifetime, Julien-François Zbinden was a prolific composer. His oeuvre includes 112 works in all musical genres (operas, oratorios, symphonies, concertos, works for the radio, stage music, film music and choral works), many of which received international awards. About twenty of his works have been recorded on disc. Out of the Swiss composers, his works are among the most performed worldwide. The style of Julien-François Zbinden can be defined as Neoclassical, though it is influenced by jazz music and by the works of Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky and Arthur Honegger.