YVES BALMER
Yves Balmer, a Franco-Swiss composer and lecturer born in 1978, seamlessly integrates musical creation with musicological research. He has pursued studies in piano, organ and saxophone, as well as music analysis, composition, orchestration and music history. A recipient of six prizes from the Conservatoire de Paris (CNSMDP), he holds a doctoral degree focusing on the creative processes of Olivier Messiaen. Balmer has held the chair of musicology at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon and has authored six books. Transitioning from his illustrious academic career, he embraced the challenges of musical composition, and has been fully engaged in creative endeavours since 2019.
Yves received the Kaija Saariaho International Composition Prize in 2023 for Winds Choreography, composed for the organ of the Helsinki Music Centre and to be premiered at the Musica Nova Helsinki festival in 2025. His debut CD Poétiques de l’instant: Debussy /Balmer has garnered international acclaim, receiving awards such as the Diapason d’Or, Opera Magazine’s Diamant, five stars from Classica, and four stars from The Guardian. His transcription of Debussy’s Proses Lyriques and his quartet Fragments soulevés par le vent, performed by Jodie Devos and the Voce Quartet, have been featured in tours across Europe, Asia and South America.
Yves’ art draws inspiration from contemporary arts, weaving profound connections with the paintings of Fabienne Verdier and the poetry of André du Bouchet or Philippe Jaccottet in works like Dans la chaleur vacante for soprano and piano, or Vortex for percussion. His fascination with sound, its fragility and its transient states leads him to explore the possibility of sculpting resonance, often combining it with a calligraphic musical gesture as in his Piano Material cycle or instrumental solos for saxophone (Saxophone Sonata), bassoon (Dark Energy) and cello (Faire surgir la lumière).
Currently serving as a professor of analysis at CNSMDP, Yves is also Editor-in-Chief of the complete edition of Olivier Messiaen’s unpublished works (Durand-Universal) and President of the French Society of Musicology starting from July 2024.