The Christian Vasseur' music borrows as much from classical tradition as from popular music. It is free of any form of dogma.
As a polymorphic musician he every often takes part into interdisciplinary events where music combines itself with other artistic media, such as photography, video, dance and theatre.
In theatrical events, his music acts as a counterpoint to the text, creating an extra voice, sometimes melodic, sometimes dissonant or noisy, based on the requirements of the staging, where acoustic and electronic sounds usually intermingle. Christian Vasseur plays lute too and composes new original music for this instrument.
Christian Vasseur had been learning the guitar on his own for some time when he met his first teacher Pascal Boëls.
Then, he took classes at the Conservatoire de Lille with
Jean-Philippe Grüneissen and discovered the Renaissance lute with Eugène Ferré at the Conservatoire de Toulouse for four years and took classes with renown lute players such as Paul O'Dette and Yasunori Imamura. Practicing the lute made him curious of improvisation and oriental music. At this time he began to perform on stage with various bands or solo, playing Early music with the lute as well as contemporary music with the guitar.
After several years of Early music repertory, He chose to dedicate himself to stage performance and music writing. At this stage, he started introducing some acting in his performances, mixing acoustic and electronic sounds, improvised and written pieces.
For 15 years, he has been teaching musical theater and free improvisation classes to various groups of people :
children and adults teen-agers in custody at the Maison d'Arrêt de Loos ; disabled adults and children (Compagnie de l'Oiseau Mouche at Roubaix, Ecole de Pratique Théâtrale at Villeneuve d'Ascq, psychatric hospital of Saint-André ). Meeting with highly vulnerable or helpless people has had a deep influence on the way he works today.
Christian Vasseur has composed many pieces of music for various instruments and bands. Truly motivated by the possibilities offered by music applied to other disciplines, he works with video artists, dance and theatrical companies.
Photos: Patrick Leforestier, François Daumerie, Frédéric Ruffin, Gérard Rouy
Painting of the cover of the sonate score: Olivier Aubry