Jacques Bekaert
Composer, journalist, photographer, Jacques Bekaert was born in 1940 in Bruges, Belgium. In the early 1960s he attended the analysis and composition classes of Henri Pousseur at the Basel Conservatory. He also worked at the Apelac Studio for Electronic Music in Brussels, where he composed A Summer Day at Stony Point, which was premiered at the Harrogate Festival (UK) in 1969. A composition for live electronics, entitled The Day After, was performed at Mills College in 1970.
This work was later released on a recording published by the French experimental poet, Henri Chopin. Another composition, for electric guitar, entitled Pop Corner, was first performed by Philip Catherine and later by the British group, Gentle Fire, led by Hugh Davies. Bekaert also worked at the Studio for Electronic Music at Brandeis University and at Mills College, where many of his compositions were performed.
In 1972 Bekaert co-founded, with Takehisa Kosugi, the musical group, Transition, which performed in Europe, notably at the ICES Festival in London. He has also performed with the Sonic Arts Union, Philip Catherine, George Lewis, and John Cage (for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company).
Composing mostly for small ensemble and electronic media, Bekaert’s works include, Aranyaprathet, for tape and instruments, created at Arch Street (Berkeley); a solo for piano, The Ghost of Madison, premiered by Rae Imamura, at the Kitchen (New York); and a collection of his works with the overall title, Summer Music 1970, composed while living in John Cage’s house in Stony Point, New York.
Of Summer Music, composer and music critic for the Oakland Tribune, Charles Shere, wrote: “On the record the result is a curiously floating kind of sound, freed from the musicians and the composer-like clouds hovering between earth and sky. It sounds improbably but the result is spiritually uplifting–like hearing Bach organ music in church on a spring day when it combines with songbirds outside.”
