André Ristic


André Ristic is a Canadian composer, pianist, accordion player, and music theorist. He has won several awards, including the Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music in 2000 for his work Catalogue de bombes occidentales, the Prix opus for Composer of the Year in 2002, and the Prix Québec-Flandre in 2003.
Born in Quebec City, Ristic's parents originated from Poland and Montenegro. He began his professional studies at the Université du Québec à Montréal in mathematics, and Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal where he studied piano, harpsichord, and musical composition. His background in mathematics has influenced his work as a music theorist, with a particular interest being the mathematical representation of sound. In the early 1990s he has applied himself to research in video synchronisation by the algorithmic numerical analysis of audio data. Later on, the use of mathematical models in his compositions took various forms, usually mixing simple musical materials with sophisticated systems such as the Lottka-Volterra equations.
In the mid-1990s Ristic served as the pianist for the Ensemble contemporain de Montréal. In 1998 he co-founded the chamber ensemble Trio Fibonacci with Gabriel Prynn and Julie-Anne Derome, performing and composing music for the group until 2006. The ensemble notably won the Prix opus in 2001. As a pianist, he is regularly invited by many contemporary music festivals and Canadian orchestras. He has also commissioned, premiered or championed several pieces by other composers of his generation, such as Pierre Kolp, Petar Klanac, Yannick Plamendon, Moritz Eggert and Enno Poppe.
Ristic played for many years with the KORE Ensemble in Montreal. In 2004 he moved to Brussels to join the piano faculty at the Institut Jaques-Dalcroze where he currently remains. Since quitting the Fibonacci Trio in Belgium he actively performs with the ensemble Musiques Nouvelles in Mons.

Composer

Ristic has written music for orchestra, chamber and solo instrumental music, as well as music for movies, the opera and museum/site-dependent installations. His catalogue numbers several dozen works for diverse combinations and situations. As a music :wikt:theoretician|theoretician, he has developed the mathematical representation of sound and some model codes to produce music by signal theory and dynamic or static differential systems. In his works, one can easily find numeric implement researches aiming to develop new technics of vector geometry applied to musical gestures ; later, the use of simplified musical elements seems to 'hide' the use of complex systems generating musical formal structure rather than musical objects, Soundstreams Canada, the Esprit Orchestra, the Orchestre Métropolitain and from concert artists Marc Couroux, Stephane Ginsburgh, and Trio Fibonacci. He composed music for Stephan Miljevic's feature films, Monsieur, Monsieur and L'Après-midi de Sonia.
Ristic's style underlines musical optimism by setting up theatre and stage elements in the music he creates or he performs. He is also fond of popular culture and as such uses numerous references to folk dances, pop music.

Affiliations

AMP represents the music of Paul Steenhuisen, Howard Bashaw, Keith Hamel, Bob Pritchard, James Harley, André Ristic, Gordon Fitzell, and Aaron Gervais.