The American musician Sharon Kanach has lived in France for most of her adult life. She originally went to Paris to study under Nadia Boulanger. Very quickly however, her path crossed that of Iannis Xenakis, with whom she collaborated closely, especially on his writings. First, she translated Arts/Sciences: Alloys, followed by a new, revised, and enlarged edition of his seminal Formalized Music, both for Pendragon Press. In 2006, Editions Parenthèses published Xenakis’s Musique de l’Architecture in French, which Kanach co-authored (released in a distinct edition by Pendragon Press as Music and Architecture, 2008). As General Editor of the “Xenakis Series” at Pendragon Press, Kanach has, so far, also edited two collective volumes: Performing Xenakis and Xenakis Matters (where the concept of a new, "applied musicology" is encouraged). Since 2009, Kanach is executive vice-president of the Centre Iannis Xenakis (formerly CCMIX and Ateliers UPIC, originally created by Xenakis in 1985) based at the Université de Rouen. In 2014, the CIX co-published with the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture-Normandie a collective volume in French: Xenakis et les Arts. In 2009 Kanach founded the “Xenakis Project of the Americas” under the prestigious auspices of the Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation at the City University of New York Graduate Center. Kanach was also the musical assistant of Giacinto Scelsi from 1978 until the composer's death in 1988. With the French mainstream publisher Actes Sud, she coordinated and published three volumes of Scelsi's writings (Les anges sont ailleurs... (writings on music and art, 2006) ; L'homme du son (poetry, 2006) ; Il sogno 101 (autobiography, 2009). She oversaw the publication of both composers' scores for Editions Salabert for many years.
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