50 - Blue Songs vol.2 -

CD DLMEditions en licence chez SOonds/PIAS.
2023

This recording is the organic continuation, the second volume of my BLUE SONGS, released on the DLM label in 2021.
The principle is the same: at the start, a few chords converge, one after the other, forming a path, a « grid ». Then motifs emerge from the harmony, calling out to each other, blending into this path, which could become a song: I'm writing my own personal "Real Book", often just for the pleasure of modulation, color, and harmonic surprise. The color of each note changes according to the chords invented.
What is improvisation? It is composing at the moment. All jazzmen have said that at one time: the Performer as a Composer.

49 - Scary Drones and Textures -

CD digital CEZAME CEG 5043
2024

Here's a project featuring 24 tracks of electro "drones", all created from personal samples of acoustic instruments, i.e., "organic" sounds of the kind you can hardly find anymore on the market, dominated by synthesized electro. In this work, I'm continuing what I started at Ina-Grm in the mid-1980s, the digital processing of acoustic sounds. The worlds thus created have a particular feel, somewhere between the real and the imaginary. This highly sophisticated music in sound processing is both a tool for soundtracks and a potential avenue for immersive concert broadcasting, as can be done at Ircam. As each track has around 7 stems (submixes), I delivered Cézame a block of 7 hours of sound... Will I have the pleasure of creating significant synchronizations, like for Enki Bilal's Immortal or Rihanna's Bitch Better Have My Money? I don't doubt it!

48 - Deep Drones and Textures -

CD digital CEZAME CEG 5042
2024

Here's a project featuring 24 tracks of electro "drones", all created from personal samples of acoustic instruments, i.e., "organic" sounds of the kind you can hardly find anymore on the market, dominated by synthesized electro. In this work, I'm continuing what I started at Ina-Grm in the mid-1980s, the digital processing of acoustic sounds. The worlds thus created have a particular feel, somewhere between the real and the imaginary. This highly sophisticated music in sound processing is both a tool for soundtracks and a potential avenue for immersive concert broadcasting, as can be done at Ircam. As each track has around 7 stems (submixes), I delivered Cézame a block of 7 hours of sound... Will I have the pleasure of creating significant synchronizations, like for Enki Bilal's Immortal or Rihanna's Bitch Better Have My Money? I don't doubt it!

47 - Art House Tension #3 -

CD digital SuperPitch / BMG SUPITH_2102
2022

"YEAH, THE FRENCH DO IT BETTER" (BMG)
Thirteen excerpts of my chamber music are now available for the audiovisual professionals,
gathering very varied colors, bass clarinet and marimba duo, tenor saxophone duo, bassoon and piano duo, alto saxophone and cello duo, tenor sax quartet, flute, celesta, and piano. An explosion of colors! For this project I collaborated with great soloists, such as Jean-Michel Goury, Agnès Vesterman, Olivier Innocenti, Emmanuel Séjourné, Jean-Marc Foltz, the Amon Quartet, Tommy Davis, Paul Riveaux, Benny Sluchin.
The so-called "contemporary" music generally evokes "weird" atmospheres when associated with the cinema.
Here, the editor underlines the "elegant, artistic, sophisticated" character of the suggested atmospheres. Thanks to him!

Presentation of the editor:
"Bring on your frantic, anxious, agitated scenes. Lay out your dark, agitated, flustered sequences. Where do these crossroad paths lead us? To a world of games and mysteries. Contemporary French composer Denis Levaillant is once again proven guilty of musical mastery. A bit crazy, a tad buoyant, and there you have it: Volume 9 presents complex, tense, atonal, arrhythmic, exciting, and edgy themes. Strings, sax, and other wind instruments like the oboe and the bassoon. Accordions, piano, flutes, and marimbas. Intertwining arrangements and tense and anxious moods, Levaillant always exceeds his ambitious goals. Yeah, the French do it better. Perfectly suited for Drama, Suspense, Tension, Film, Art House, and Dramedy movies."

46 - Blue Songs

CD DLMéditions DLM 3321
2022

The Performer as a Composer
In the beginning, there are a few chords that meet, attract each other,
converge, constituting one after the other a path, a «grid.» Then motifs
are born, call each other (are challenged), merge in this path, which
could become a song, so I write in a way my personal «Real Book,»
often just for the pleasure of modulation, color, harmonic surprise.
Some of these Parts are extrapolations from tunes of my comic
opera Miracle in Moscow composed in parallel - the «Real Book» thus
takes all its meaning: I write my own standards.

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45 - Art House Tension #2 - Contemporary Orchestral Themes

CD digital SuperPitch / BMG SUPITH_2093
2022

Ten excerpts of my music for symphonic orchestra are now available for audiovisual professionals.

Editor's presentation: "Looking to distill fear and suspense into your dramas? Those who know his work have become, over the years, total Denis Levaillant addicts. His uncanny and relentless knack for tormented and suspenseful contemporary compositions make for nervous, hectic, anxious expressions. These nervous, agitated orchestral themes build upon strings, woodwinds, brass and drums to invoke, without failing, an impending and ominous sense of distressing threat. Levaillant’s aleatoric take on music is ideally suited for sophisticated and disturbing atmospheres, vintage or art house films, drama, tension, horror. That tight, oppressive feeling clutching your heart? This is what real, masterful tension feels like.”

44 - Pastiches

CD DLMéditions DLM 3221.
2021

The false-true and the true-false
Theatre and cinema have this in common that they give us to feel a false-truth, namely a false, more true than true. Everything is false, and yet I am carried away. Out-of-time. This false-truth dissolves time and animates my inner museum. The false-true will be a successful pastiche; the true-false will remain plagiarism.
For me, it started with Hubert Toint's film, Trombone en coulisses. The film is all about that: it's the story of the Court's trombone orchestra, which is the best orchestra in the world when no one has ever heard it play. A feast to put to music! I invented a sound of trombone orchestra without the slightest trombone. The album brings together stage and film music from the 1980s and 1990s linked by this theme of true and false: Les Menteries du style, Trombone en coulisses, Vidéopérette, Oniric Slow, Passage de l'Heure bleue, Bienvenue au Palais Mascotte, Nerone Blues.

You can choose the platform that suits you best here.

43 - Art House Tension - Contemporary Orchestral Themes

CD digital SuperPitch / BMG SUPITH_2091
2022

Thirteen excerpts of my music for symphonic orchestra are now available for audiovisual professionals. Editor’s presentation:

« Composer Denis Levaillant is the master of tension. In his 7th album for SuperPitch, he takes his ability to torment his listeners to the next level. His dissonant and atonal arrangements combine strings and woodwinds to create impending, ominous feelings you can’t escape. His orchestral themes are suspenseful, menacing, nervous, agitated, frantic. Hectic, even. Levaillant’s aleatoric take on music has the uncanny ability to drum up horror, distress, and frenzy that is ideally suited for sophisticated and disturbing atmospheres, vintage or art house films, drama, tension, horror, and anything meant to create that tight, oppressive feeling that clutches your heart. »

42 - Art Gallery

CD digital SuperPitch / BMG SUPITH_2085
2021

BRACE YOURSELF
Ten trio titles with Barre Phillips and Barry Altschul released for audiovisual professionals. Here is the presentation by the publisher:
« Contemporary French composer Denis Levaillant and his particular brand of free-form jazz have become regular fixtures at SuperPitch. This refined, art-minded album further explores his relentless knack for the frantic, moody, and strange and gives freedom a new meaning. With the double bass, the piano, or drum solos as his backbones, Levaillant’s nervous, frantic, and dark compositions build turmoil and stir multiple layers of tension and hopelessness. Expect to feel the drama, anxiety, fear, chaos, elegance, disorientation, and a touch of sensuality and elegance. The dissonance and melancholia that revel within the confines of this Levaillant’s work will work their eerie magic in any decent or decadent art gallery. Still, they will do great for your horror films, dramas, supernatural and hallucination-induced scenes, art house films, human dramas, psychological dramas, and more. Brace yourselves. »

Open Runs, recorded in trio with Barre Phillips and Barry Altschul, was synchronized in the soundtrack of the feature film LA VOIE ROYALE

41 - Contemporary Works Vol.5

CD digital SuperPitch Artist Séries / BMG
2021

Ten excerpts of my jazz music in trio with Barre Phillips and Barry Altschul are now available for audiovisual professionals.
Presentation by the editor: "The brilliantly disturbed composer Denis Levaillant is in one of his moods, again. Forget smooth, this is sharp, tense jazz with an edge, the kind of irresistible and cinematic jazz that will keep you on your toes. Feeling frantic, nervous, anxiously gripping on to your chair, even? This album can do that, but also offers elegant, abstract, downright psychedelic incursions, at times. In the hands of this trio, the piano is tense, the drums are lively and contrasted, the double-bass is urgent and on speed. These are tracks that exude such a dramatic quality, such a premium understanding of the way experimental can expand into the dark, the desolate, but also simply go towards the weird, the mysterious, that they already feel like contemporary classics. »

40 - Contemporary Works Vol.4

CD digital SuperPitch Artist Séries 24/ BMG
2021

Publisher's presentation: "Contemporary composer Denis Levaillant is back again with his personal and eccentric brand of strange. He sometimes gives in to his knack nervous curious slapstick-inspired mischievous and quirky atmospheres. In addition to strings and brass this fourth volume sometimes uses the accordion woodwinds & drums. There is gloom and mystery as well as internal chaos and turmoil in these modern sometime dissonant gripping compositions."

39 - Contemporary Works Vol.3

CD digital SuperPitch Artist Séries 17/ BMG
2020

Publisher’s presentation: « Composer extraordinaire Denis Levaillant is back with a new set of somber, poignant pieces where a cold loneliness reigns, only to be rivaled by the artist’s personal, almost trademarked version of desolation. Unsettling, bleak, sometimes downright depressing, these mysterious, classical contemporary tracks will keep haunting you, long after you’ve heard them. They also confer their tense, suspenseful and orchestral quality to any drama or thriller, architecture documentary or culture piece, avant-garde art house film or film noir in need of a touch of European flair. We love weird. »

38 - Cinematic Orchestral Music

CD online GUM/KAPAGAMA GMS 101
2020

Fourteen excerpts of my music for large orchestra are now available for audiovisual professionals.
The editor’s presentation is explicit: “Beautiful and elegant selection of orchestral works reminiscent of Hollywood’s golden age”.

A large excerpt from L'Opéra de la Lune (woodwind orchestra in pairs) was synchronized in the soundtrack to the feature film THE LOST DAUGHTER

37 - Contemporary Works Vol.2

CD digital SuperPitch Artist Séries 14/ BMG
2020

Editor’s presentation: “French composer Denis Levaillant’s neo-classical compositions never disappoint and always hit every single spot and a wide range of emotions. Here, he strikes again and displays his usual emotional mastery with a delicate palette that explores all the shades of the human heart: dark, sad, melancholic, gloomy, hopeful, tender, peaceful, dreamy… Levaillant's sense of drama always brilliantly illustrates both documentary and feature films."

36 - Contemporary Works Vol.1

CD digital SuperPitch Artist Séries 12/ BMG
2020

Editor’s presentation: “Helmed by French composer and pianist Denis Levaillant, here comes a collection of contemporary classical music. The compositions, recorded with a small ensemble, touch the heart and trigger a wide range of emotions, at times evocative and tender, at others melancholic, ominous. Levaillant explores the desolate void and intricacies the human soul offers, with a depth both abyssal and poignant. Art imitates Life, and Life imitates Art.”

35 - ELECTRO SPACE PIANO

CD DLM 3120
2020
This album makes it possible to follow the historical evolution of digital sound treatments since it brings together three works for piano and electronics. These pieces are all organized in the same way, a concert piano dialoguing with an orchestra of transformed piano sounds: Piano transit, pioneering work in this field (1983, commissioned by the Ministère de la Culture), Elektrospacepiano (2003, commissioned by the Ina-Grm) and the latest, entirely realized in my studio, Piano Augmented: More Lights (2019).

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34 - CINEMATIC ORCHESTRAL MUSIC VOL.2

CD en ligne GUM/KAPAGAMA GMS 090
2019
Treize extraits de ma musique pour grand orchestre sont à présent disponibles pour les professionnels de l’audiovisuel.
La présentation de l’éditeur est explicite: "Romance, fantaisie, aventure... Tout ce dont vous avez besoin est dans cet album d’orchestre cinématique purement à l’ancienne”.
Quand l’orchestration “pour de vrai” devient un art “à l’ancienne”!

33 - CINEMATIC ORCHESTRAL MUSIC VOL.1

CD en ligne GUM/KAPAGAMA GMS 049
2019
Oeuvres pour grand orchestre masterisées pour le cinéma

32 - AURORA BOREALIS

CD Koka Media 2489
2019
Slightly 'minimal' piano sequences are processed and mixed with electro sounds; each track appears in three versions: mix, the piano alone, and electro alone. The resulting music is very original. This album is part of the project SoloPianoSolo Piano augmented Recital.

31 - HAYDN Early and late Sonatas

CD DLM 3018
2018
Editor’s Note:
“The corpus of the some sixty keyboard sonatas by Joseph Haydn is absolutely fascinating in that it links the Late Baroque and nascent Romanticism, whilst accompanying the birth of a new instrument, the pianoforte. In this CD, composer-pianist Denis Levaillant gives a highly personal, committed version of two youthful sonatas (Hob. nos. 13 and 14) and four late sonatas (41, 48, 49 and 51). Here, this music, so alive and rich in inventions, is treated like a present-day text, with considerable clarity of articulation, a keen sense of rhythm, and quite varied colours, in a very clear, precise, sound recording, both close-up and spacious.”

Presentation on the FNAC's website:
"Joseph Haydn’s corpus of some sixty sonatas is utterly fascinating; it links the late Baroque and early Romantic periods while accompanying the birth of a new instrument, the pianoforte. In this CD, composer and pianist Denis Levaillant gives a highly committed, personal version of two early sonatas (nos. HOB 13 and 14) and four late sonatas (41, 48, 49, and 51). This lively music, so rich in invention, is treated here as a text of today, with great clarity of articulation, a keen sense of rhythm, and a wide range of colors in a clear, precise, woody recording that is both close and spacious."

Extrait : Sonate HOB.XVI: 51 Finale presto

30 - City organix

Digital CD Cézame CEZ 4191
2015
Downtempo & electroacoustic underscores. 
I asked to Mathias Delplanque to build rhythmic patterns and electronic atmospheres from my own sounds, recorded in my studio (essentially from the sessions of The Musicians of Bremen): the obtained sound thus remains very ‘organic’.

Night Owls

29 - Cinematic Edge Vol. 1

Digital CD on Cézame CEZ 4148
2014
What wrote the publisher: “Denis Levaillant has put together a collection of cutting edge pieces from composers and performers with a wealth of experience on stage, in theatre and in movies and with a talent for thinking outside the box. The result: a vertiginous high-wire trip on the borders of electro and acoustic.”

Landslide

28 - The Fear Factory

CD online Cézame CEZ 4097
2012
What wrote the publisher: “Denis Levaillant exposes our fears, forebodings, private anguish and public trauma. Powerful and disturbing but subtle and provocative. With typical mastery of nuance the composer allies percussion and sonic pictures making this album an indispensable audiovisual tool.”

Psychopath
This title was synchronized in the Rihanna’s video Bitch Better Have My Money (2015).

27 - Music is the Film

CD Universal
2009
This album is a tribute to the cinema. Every title of this suite for chamber ensemble was conceived for a liked movie. The recollection aroused the invention. I wrote the original music of an imaginary movie.

Home Lands
This title was synchronized in the feature film Blue is the Warmest Color by Abdellatif Kechiche, Palme d’Or at the Festival de Cannes 2013.

26 - Modern Acoustic Sketches

CD Koka Media 2306
2008
I had the pleasure to record great soloists for this project: László Hadady (hb), Jean-Marc Foltz (clar), Paul Riveaux (bassoon), Jean-Michel Goury (sax), Olivier Innocenti (acc), Marie-Thérèse Grisenti (vlc), Jean-Jacques Avenel (db).

The dutch director Ad Bol was the first to synchronize some of those tracks in his feature film Blindspot in 2008.

Dutch director Ad Bol was the first to integrate tracks from this album into the soundtrack of his feature film BLINDSPOT, including the closing credits for Another Day.

25 - Drone Music

CD Cézame CEZ 4051/4052
2007
What wrote the publisher: “The function of drones is to create a discreet climate or dimension, enhancing the visual and narrative flow of a production”.

Nuclear Menace

24 - Landscape with piano

CD Cézame CEZ 4045
2006
What wrote the publisher: “Simply, and with emotion "Landscapes with Piano" is a kind of intimate geography lesson describing places from mythology and from daily life, each one evoking a color, a climate, a memory, a feeling…” Excerpts of Chants d’amour, Le Jardin du sanglier, Etudes Africaines, La Petite danseuse, Un petit rien-du-tout, Piano Songs.

Swansea

23 - Documentary Line

CD Cézame CEZ 4023 à 4029
2003
What wrote the publisher: “We've been rummaging through the Cezame archives and we've come across some real treasures. Previously unreleased titles from composers who've been with us from the very beginning - Marc-Olivier Dupin, Armand Frydman, Didier Goret, Bruno Letort, Denis Levaillant, Frédi Loth and Gérard Torikian - Nuggets of pure delight.”
Excerpts of Drama Symphony, TechnoSpacePiano, ElektroSpacePiano, Chants d’amour profane, Piano Transit, Easy-Uneasy, La Femme sur la Lune, Drama Symphony.

L'Homme dans l'espace

22 - Dark

CD Koka Media KOK 2234
2002
Commissioned by Frédéric Leibovitz, this album fast became a standard of the kind of “drama”, particularly appreciated in the United States and in England. Electroacoustic composition designed for the synchronization in features films and documentaries, using excerpts of concert works: Drama Symphony, Piano transit, Praise of the Water, ElektroSpacePiano, Easy/Uneasy, Les Heures défaites). The first one to have used some tracks of this album for his movie is Enki Bilal for Immortal.

Atomic Reaction

21 - Figures

CD CMG 11
2001
« Musician open to every current, and whose capacity for integrating diverse layers of music would have pleased the pianist and theorist Ferrucio Busoni, Denis Levaillant is represented here by chamber works dedicated to some of his performers friends” Pierre Michel.
First studio recording of chamber works by top notch soloists : Quatuor Arpeggione, Quintette Nielsen, Jean-Marc Foltz, Quatuor Xasax, Quintette Just’à’Cinq.

Le Clair, l’obscur Mouvement 3

20 - Direct

CD Tangram TC 6042
2000
“The piano has always been one and complete for me: a territory open to all music, a busy crossroads intensively travelled upon. Direct features four suites of works, composed independently from each other and which, once assembled, make a very open program, prone to reach the widest audiences.”
Quatre études africaines, Quatre chants d’amour profane, Quatre portraits, Quatre préludes baroques: this solo concert was recorded at the Maison de la Culture d’Amiens, June 21st 1994.

Hi, Samson!

18/19 - Out There/Ailleurs

Double CD Cézame CEZ 4019
1999
“A contemporary musical journey through classical and electronic music.”

First Step

17 - L'Etrange

CD Cézame CEZ 4015
1998
“Weird, strange, odd... what's the matter with this music ?”

L'inquiétant

16 - Shorts !

CD Cézame CEZ 4014
1997
“Stings, links and bridges in the early electroacoustic avant-garde style.”

Le temps passé

15 - Théâtres

CD Cézame CEZ 4012
1996
“Contemporary music made for theater pieces.”

La Forêt se venge

14 - Génériques potentiels

CD Cézame CEZ 4009
1995
“One of the most famous reference of contemporary music for audiovisual programs”

Jazzy Trick

13 - NEXT

CD Koka Media KOK2072
1993
Commissioned by Frédéric Leibovitz, this album became a real reference in the production because certainly one of the very first realizations of contemporary music for films. We find there remixes of many concert works : Eloge de l’eau, DD Blue Gold Diggers, Speakers, Inside.

Insinuation

12. Musiques pour les voix

CD Thésis THC 82054
1992
“For modern voices, I invent modern stories. Text and music interweave through the voice. I like to go through the different degrees of their encounters - melodrama, musical, song, opera. Feeling and emotion, flesh and words, arguments and dreams: this division has fascinated us since the Ancients and will never leave us.”
Les Pierres noires, for twelve voices. Le Baigneur, chamber opera. Speakers, for two actors and twelve singers.

Les Pierres noires 1

11. Musiques pour la danse

CD Thésis THC 82053
1991
“The new ballet music experiments with all other relationships between body and imagination, it becomes music for the stage, it is a full dramatic actor, dispensing with a text in order to say.”
In this album you can find four musics written for contemporary ballets: Passage de l’heure bleue, for Stéphanie Aubin and le Groupe de Recherche chorégraphique de l’Opéra national de Paris; Les Pas perdus et Aranzaquil, for Dominique Petit (Maison de la danse de Lyon) ; Dérive, for Brigitte Lefèvre and le Théâtre du Silence.

Allez, entrez !

10. Musiques pour le piano

CD Thésis THC 82051
1991
“For me the piano is more than an instrument: it is a matter created every day, a support for the imagination and part of my identity. This record bears witness to this.”
Douze mouvements, for solo piano; Piano transit, piano and electronics; Souvenirs de Félicité, Radio play.

Mouvement 1 Monodie

9. Musiques pour le théâtre

CD Thésis THC 82038
1990
“Normally, once the curtain falls on a production for the last time, the music is never heard again. These compositions have survived and, along with my other works, are now in my catalogue.”
Three productions by Alain Françon:
Les Menteries du style was written for the production by the Comédie Française in 1986 of Corneille’s Menteur, Suite pour Hedda for the 1987 production of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler at the Théâtre de l’Athénée in Paris, Bienvenue au Palais Mascotte for the 1988 production of Enzo Corman’s Palais Mascotte at the Théâtre de la Bastille in Paris.

Sonnerie

8. Passages

CD Thésis THJ 82016
1986
Recorded in the studio Davout by Gérard Chiron, the Denis Levaillant’s trio with Barre Phillips (double bass) and Barry Altschul (drums) writes its innovative and virtuoso vision of the trio jazz. This trio performed until 1993 with a lot of success a program entitled The Passengers of the delta.

Rhythmic Training

7. Barium Circus

LP Nato 382
1984
Produced by Jean Rochard, this sextet mixes cheerfully detailed writing and free but precise improvisation.

Entrée des Athlètes aux chevaux noirs

6. Six séquences pour Alfred Hitchcock

LP Nato 304
1984
Revival in CD 1993 (53041.2) and 1995 (112 131)
Record shared with Joëlle Léandre, British summer time ends, Jac Berrocal, Annick Nozati and Alan Tomlinson in homage to master of the suspense. The chosen work is entitled Question de principe, which resumes elements of Inside, with the soloists of l’Itinéraire.

5. Direct

LP Nato 140
1983
First program of solo piano, recorded by the excellent producer Jean Rochard with Daniel Deshays. This program is made of portraits of liked pianists and composers of jazz (Samson François, Duke, Thelonious, Earl Hines, Bud, Paul Bley …)

Un jour sur les conseils de Paul

4. Trans-Musiques

LP Freebird
1979
Recording of a concert given on October 6th and 7th, 1978 in front of more than 3000 people in La Villette, organized by the Libération newspaper. The duet Levaillant / Rigaud is next to the cream of the French cutting edge jazz of the time: Malherbe, Pauvros, Boni, Marais, Jaume, Lockwood, Portal.

3. Instable

LP Ad Lib 2002
1978
Auto-production of the duet Levaillant/Rigaud. This program had a lot of success, and the duet played in big festivals. Written/Improvised, Contemporary/Modal.

Caroline

2. Attention l'armée

LP Live Records TDC 05
1975
First auto-production, first LP., with Kirjuhel (voice), Carlos Andréou (voice), Jean-Jacques Avenel (db), Jean Méreu (tp), Pierre Rigaud (sax), Gérard Tamestit (vln), Jacques Mahieux and Christian Ville (drums), Denis Levaillant (composition and piano).

Attention… l'armée

1. Son dernier Tango

1973
At the time of the big demonstrations in France against the “law Debré”, an EP of two tracks produced by the Antimilitarist Committee and recorded with Mahjun and the Saravah team. Sold in demonstrations, fast exhausted. An experience of slam prematurely.