Composer Pierre Charvet was born in 1968 in France.
He graduated from Manhattan School of Music in New York, where he also received in 1991 the Jon Woolley award « in recognition of outstanding accomplishment in composition ».
At the age of 23, he entered IRCAM, the Pierre Boulez Institut in Paris. Three years later, he’s appointed professor of composition at the Manhattan School of Music, from whish he will resigned in 2001.
His CD L’invitation au voyage, released by Universal Classics, was awarded at the « Grand prix des compositeurs de la Lettre du Musicien ». His music has been the object of commissions, concerts, radio and television broadcasts. He has worked with multimedia artists, and has composed several film scores.
Although his music is mostly instrumental, he uses extensively new technologies. « However, one must not imagine that his preferred bedtime reading is Ray Bradbury or George Orwell. His Tablets of the Law remain Johann Sebastian Bach's Art of Fugue: a transcendent Talmud that reminds him that, while music has always flirted with mathematics and the exact sciences, it remains a bewitching mystery, a mystical act, a miraculous emotion. An art that is paradoxical like the composer himself - marginal in an awkward position amongst his contemporaries, an out-of-sync dreamer like the haggard heroes of The Tales of Hoffmann [...].
'Smoke of smokes, all is smoke', repeats the soprano in Qohelet, Pierre Charvet's work distilled in the filters of IRCAM. Count on his music to kindle apocalyptic fires. » (French magazine Telerama)
Pierre Charvet has also an intense pedagogical activity : he wrote and hosted the acclaimed serie Simple comme musique for the french national TV France 5, followed by another show La musique de Maître Pierre, for the european classical music channel Mezzo.
Starting september 2007, his new show Presto ! (with Les Siècles and conductor François-Xavier Roth) can be seen twice a week on prime time on the main french national TV station France 2.
This season Pierre is the host of the young series at the Cité de la Musique in Paris. He's also the author of two books : Comment parler de musique aux enfants (Vilo publishing) and Conversation avec Philippe Caubère (L’insolite).