Rainer Boesch, 1938 - 2014
Composer and musician Rainer Boesch has died aged 76.
Rainer Boesch was born in Männedorf (ZH) in 1938. He studied in Zurich and obtained a piano diploma in Geneva with Louis Hiltbrand and a virtuosity diploma in Neuchâtel with Harry Datyner. Between 1966 and 1968, he interned with the GRM (Groupe de Recherche Musicale) and studied composition with Olivier Messiaen at the CNSM in Paris. He won 1st prize, 1st nominated, with Désagrégation, for clarinets, brass, voice and magnetic tape, the first work to use electroacoustic music in a competition at this conservatory. Between 1968 and 1972, he was director of the Lausanne Conservatory.
Founder of Studio ESPACES in Geneva (integrated into the Conservatoire Populaire de Musique since 1977) and co-founder of the Centre Suisse de Musique Informatique, he collaborates with Ircam, is invited by the MIT Media-Lab in Boston, by Stanford's CCRMA for musical research and by the Bach-Academy in Sendai, Japan, for Masterclasses. He has taught improvisation since 1976 at the Institut Jaques-Dalcroze and since 1994 at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris.
Also a pianist, he has composed numerous works for instruments and/or electronics, which have been performed in Europe, the USA, Japan and Switzerland.
