Christian Sebille was born in Épernay (France) in 1963. After founding Césaré, Centre national de création musicale in Reims, Christian Sebille was appointed director of GMEM - Centre national de création musicale in Marseille in 2011, where he is both director of the structure and composer.
In 1983, he began studying electroacoustic music with Jean Schwartz (Conservatoire de Gennevilliers) and Philippe Prévost (Ircam), then in 1987, mixed music with Luc Ferrari at La Muse en Circuit.
In Reims, his artistic choices are geared towards the cross-fertilization of aesthetics and the combination of artistic disciplines. In this way, he encourages research into diversity and new ways of (re)presenting musical creation.
Christian Sebille's catalog includes over seventy electroacoustic and mixed works, including a chamber opera(L'alleluiah - Georges Bataille - commissioned by the French government), numerous pieces for theater or choreography (Jean Deloche, Nadège MacLeay, Emmanuelle Huynh...) and a commission from the Opéra de Limoges for orchestra, choir, three percussion instruments, electric guitar and three voices. From 2002 to 2013, he produced an extensive cycle of musical installations (Series entitled Miniatures), the eleventh of which, commissioned by the city of Dijon, is particularly ambitious. The thirteenth and last, commissioned by the Centre des Monuments Nationaux, was designed for the Château d'If in Marseille. In composing his installations, he addresses the notions of space, movement and landscape that characterize and characterize his artistic gesture.
Since the 1990s, Christian Sebille has been developing computerized lutherie, enabling him to become involved in the field of improvisation, both in France and abroad (Alex Grillo, Sylvain Kassap, Philippe Foch, Matt Bourne, Christophe de Bezanac, Jean-Marc Montera, Miquèu Montanaro, Jean-François Vrod, Claudine Simon...). These experiences provide him with a wide field of experimentation in the search for sound matter, which he puts to good use in his compositions.
His affinity for social commitment has led him to develop projects where commitment, participation, transmission and musical creation are combined in his creative process and project design. During long residencies (Reunion, Cameroon, Martinique...), he invented a series of radio concerts, which consist in deploying on stage all the electroacoustic ingredients (interviews, sound recordings, real time, sound effects) that combine with the presence of musicians. The result is a performance in the form of a live radio broadcast, integrating the site's sound identity. The most recent performances, with Philippe Foch (percussion), contrasted the two industrial sites of Donges (Pays de Loire) and Martigues (Étang de Berre).
Since 2017, Christian Sebille, in residence at CIRVA (Centre International de Recherche Verre et Art) has been working on the Paysage de Propagations project, a series of productions in the form of installations or performances. The first two stages (#1 Matrice and #2 Performance-installation) were presented in 2021 at the GMEM Propagations Festival in Marseille, then at the Centre Wallonie Bruxelles in Paris. Numerous versions continue to be adapted for presentation (Musica in Strasbourg 2023, L'Arsenal-Metz in 2024).
The installation is characterized by the paralleling of a powerful visual proposition, created with visual artist Francisco Ruiz de Infante - with whom he has been collaborating for 15 years - with a mechanical and electroacoustic musical composition that unfolds over 25 minutes.
Numerous developments of Paysage de Propagations will be accomplished...
Christian Sebille pursues his path by renewing his experimental fields, among others with Alex Grillo (Festival Détours de Babel in Grenoble, "Indonesia and Gamelan" project), Miquèu Montanaro and Jean-François Vrod (Électro-Aimant), Claudine Simon (Fresques) and Macha Makeïeff (Trouble-Fête exhibition - Maison Jean Vilar in Avignon, Musée des tapisseries in Aix-en-Provence and TNP in Villeurbanne).
He is also preparing a series of electroacoustic pieces, the first of which is in collaboration with choreographer Emmanuelle Huynh(Embrasser un arbre, embrasser le temps...) and the second, commissioned by L'Espace Culturel de Chaillol - Le chant des cimes - continues his research into landscape, sound identity and ecology.
Christian Sebille is a composer and artistic director of the GMEM in Marseille. He works on the realization of sound installations in situ, in particular within the framework of a series entitled Miniatures. The place of sound capture is linked to the place of its diffusion in a ratio of space compression (reduction of the diffusion space in relation to the capture space) and temporal reduction (ratio of capture time / diffusion time). Moreover, he works on the concrete sound and on the capacity of the material to be in itself its own diffuser (the instrumental object). The radiation of the material and the movement of the object (sound) play with each other.
Paysages dePropagations is his latest series presented in the form of an installation, performance or concert, the sound base of which comes from glass pieces blown at the CIRVA (Centre International de Recherche sur le Verre et les Arts plastiques de Marseille) and is then transformed by an electroacoustic device.
