Michel Redolfi

Michel Redolfi (b. Dec 8, 1951) is a French electroacoustic composer and experimental musician from Marseille, best known for the 'underwater music' concept. In 1969, he co-founded GMEM (Groupe de musique expérimentale de Marseille) with Marcel Frémiot and Georges Boeuf.

Redolfi moved to the USA in 1973, working as a guest resident at several major computer music research centers: Bregman Digital Music Studio at Dartmouth College (directed by Jon Appleton, one of the inventors of groundbreaking digital synthesizer Synclavier), University of Wisconsin-Madison studios, and California Institute Of The Arts. He collaborated with several prominent composers and musicians in the United States, such as Terry Riley, Jon Hassell, Daniel R. Harris, Steve Shehan, and John Cage. From 1977 to 1984, Michel Redolfi worked at the UC San Diego, where Center For Music Experiment had been funding his pioneering research in a liquid environment music broadcasting, Project WET – Water Electronically Tuned. Some of his albums were inspired by American natural landscapes.

His debut album Immersion / Pacific Tubular Waves (1980) was released in France with a stereoscopic cover and a pair of red-green glasses. The record, which was dedicated to Jon Appleton, included Pacific Tubular Waves (1979), commissioned by INA-GRM, and Redolfi's first underwater piece Immersion (1980). A year later, the composer organized Sonic Waters at San Diego Bay, the first subaqueous concert in history: the music was broadcasted underwater for a large audience floating or submerged in diving suits.

After returning to France, Michel Redolfi served as the director of the Centre International De Recherche Musicale (CIRM) in Nice from 1987 to 1998, simultaneously leading a contemporary music festival MANCA (Musiques Actuelles Nice-Côte d'Azur). Redolfi continued organizing multiple underwater concerts at swimming pools, ocean bays, and lakes around Europe and in the USA with such programs like Nucléus '89 in Antibes and Nice; Crysallis '92 opera, premiered at Grenoble / Echirolles Olympic pool with Japanese soprano Yumi Nara and percussionist Alex Grillo during the '38e Rugissants' new music festival, Virtual Lagoon '98 at Sydney Festival, and La Citta Liquida at the 2006 Venice Biennale. He wrote music for various choreographers, produced sound design for Luc Besson's Le Grand Bleu film and several animations by William Latham.