Biography

Lévy was born in Paris, France. After having been a jazz pianist, he studied composition with Gérard Grisey

Gérard Grisey

Gérard Grisey was a French composer of contemporary music.-Biography:Gérard Grisey was born in Belfort, France on 17 June 1946. He studied at the Trossingen Conservatory in Germany from 1963 to 1965 before entering the Conservatoire de Paris...

, orchestration with Marc-André Dalbavie

Marc-André Dalbavie

Marc-André Dalbavie is a French composer. He had his first music lessons at age 6 and later studied at the Conservatoire de Paris. In 1985 he joined the research department of IRCAM where he studied digital synthesis, computer assisted composition and spectral analysis. In the early 1990s he...

 and ethnomusicology with Gilles Leothaud at the Conservatoire de Paris

Conservatoire de Paris

The Conservatoire de Paris is a college of music and dance founded in 1795, now situated in the avenue Jean Jaurès in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, France...

 from 1996 to 2000. In 2001, he went to Berlin on the DAAD Artist program, and in 2002 to the Villa Medici

Villa Medici

The Villa Medici is a mannerist villa and an architectural complex with a garden contiguous with the larger Borghese gardens, on the Pincian Hill next to Trinità dei Monti in Rome, Italy. The Villa Medici, founded by Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany and now property of the French...

 / Academy of France in Rome. In 2004 he shared the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize

Ernst von Siemens Music Prize

The international Ernst von Siemens Music Prize is an annual music prize given by the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste on behalf of the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung , established in 1972. The foundation was established by Ernst von Siemens...

 in composition with Johannes Maria Staud

Johannes Maria Staud

- Biography :Staud studied with, amongst others, Brian Ferneyhough and Michael Jarrell. He gained a publishing contract with Universal Edition in 2000, and since then has won numerous prizes, including a special music prize of the Austrian Republic , the composition award of the Salzburg Easter...

 and Enno Poppe

Enno Poppe

Enno Poppe is a German composer and conductor of classical music and an academic teacher.-Professional career:...

. A former pedagogical advisor at IRCAM

IRCAM

IRCAM is a European institute for science about music and sound and avant garde electro-acoustical art music. It is situated next to, and is organizationally linked with, the Centre Pompidou in Paris...

 in Paris and professor of orchestration

Orchestration

Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting for orchestra music composed for another medium...

 at the Hanns Eisler Music Conservatory in Berlin, he is currently assistant professor in composition at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 in New York. He has held numerous composition seminars and lectures in Europe (including Berlin, Como, and Paris) and the US (including at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

, Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern University

Northwestern University

Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

, Manhattan School of Music

Manhattan School of Music

The Manhattan School of Music is a major music conservatory located on the Upper West Side of New York City. The school offers degrees on the bachelors, masters, and doctoral levels in the areas of classical and jazz performance and composition...

, and Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

).

His instrumental works, influenced by the spectral school, some acoustic illusions and techniques from various non-Western cultures, mainly focus on the relation between the whole and the detail (in a sort of "instrumental pointillism"), on paradoxes of perception and musical grammatology, and on techniques of "cross-rhythms" generalized to every musical parameter. While using new technologies, he has also developed some "meta-works" (such as Soliloque sur [x, x,...]).

Catalog (excerpt)

• A peu près de, for two trumpets (2010)
• A propos, for flute, clarinet, piano, violin & cello (2008)
• Pour orchestre, for big orchestra (2008)
• Lexèmes hirsutes, for cello solo (2007)
• Querwüchsig, for ensemble (2007)
• Tre volti del volubile Ares, for wind symphonic orchestra (2006)
• Les murmures d'une orchidée solitaire, for two Guqin
  Guqin
  The guqin is the modern name for a plucked seven-string Chinese musical instrument of the zither family...
  
  , Chinese flutes, hammond organ
  Hammond organ
  The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond in 1934 and manufactured by the Hammond Organ Company. While the Hammond organ was originally sold to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, in the 1960s and 1970s it became a standard keyboard...
  
  , harp, violin & cello (2004)
• Risâla fî-l-hob wa fî'lm al-handasa, ["Small treatise of love and geometry"] for flute, clarinet, euphonium or tenor saxophone, violin & cello (2003)
• Soliloque sur [X, X, X et X], commentaries from a computer about a misunderstood concert (2002) (webpage for the metawork Soliloque)
• Hérédo-ribotes, for solo viola and 51 orchestra musicians (2001)
• Où niche l'hibou ?, small pedagogical pieces for a young student and his teacher (for two saxophones or two flutes or two clarinets) (1999)
• Coïncidences, for ensemble of 33 musicians (1999)
• Durch, in memoriam G. Grisey, for saxophone quartet (1998)
• L'air d'ailleurs-Bicinium, for alto saxophone and tape (1997)
• Dr.B., for baritone and bassoon. Musical theater, inspired by "die Schachnovelle" by Stefan Zweig
  Stefan Zweig
  Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most famous writers in the world.- Biography :...
  
  (1996)
• Les deux ampoules d'un sablier peu à peu se comprennent, for solo amplified harp (1996)