Jean-Louis Agobet was born in 1968 in Blois, France. He attended composition courses with Michel Pascal at the Aix-en-Provence Conservatory of Music and then studied analysis, composition, and orchestration with Jacques Charpentier in Nice, and composition and computer music with Philippe Manoury at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Lyon. He also attended a masterclass with Luigi Nono in the summer of 1989 at the Centre Acanthes.

He has received numerous awards, including the Special Prize of the Prix Italia in 1995 for the radio monodrama Rinvenuto (commissioned by Radio-France). In 1994 he was selected to participate in Cursus (IRCAM’s composition and computer music course) and the following year the IRCAM/Ensemble Intercontemporain Reading Committee commissioned him to compose a piece for ensemble and electronics. In 1998, he received a Commande d’Etat (commission from the French Ministry of Culture) to write the score for Gardiens de phare, a 1928 silent movie by Jean Grémillon. The piece, for septet and electronics, premiered at the Auditorium du Louvre in February 1999.

Agobet was an artist-in-residence at the Villa Medici from 1996 to 1998. From September 1998 to September 2000, he served as composer-in-residence of the Orchestre National de Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon.

His work has been commissioned by Radio-France, IRCAM, INA-GRM, Musique Nouvelle en Liberté, and the French Ministry of Culture, among others, and performed by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio-France, the Orchestre National de Montpellier, the Orchestre National d’Ile de France, L’Itinéraire, Court-Circuit, 2E2M, and more. The Orchestre National de Montpellier premiered Phonal in May 2000. Antiphonal Memory, a commission from IRCAM for large orchestra and electronics, was premiered in April 2001 at the Pompidou Center, performed by the Ensemble InterContemporain. In the 2000-2001 season, his work was performed by Les Percussions de Strasbourg, and he received a commission from the Orchestre des Pays de Savoie.

In 1999, a first CD of chamber music and ensemble pieces was released with the group Itinéraire under the direction of Mark Foster for the Label MFA-Radio France/Harmonia Mundi. This recording received the Choc prize from Le Monde de la Musique (MFA 216029, distributed by Harmonia Mundi).

© Ircam-Centre Pompidou, 2000