André Boucourechliev was a French-Bulgarian pianist, musicologist, and composer known for his aleatory works. He was also active as an educator and as a writer of scholarly articles and music criticism. He was born in 1925 in Sofia, Bulgaria to a music-loving family. His musical talents were realized at a very young age, and he took daily piano lessons from his aunt, Dora Boucourechliev. His first formal training began in 1946 at the Sofia Conservatory, where he studied piano with Andrei Stoianov and Panka Pelischek. Two years later, he won the National Competition for Music Interpretation with a performance of Liszt's Piano Concerto. Part of his award included a study grant from the French Embassy to study music in Paris. In 1949, he moved to Paris to enroll at the École Normale de Musique, where he studied piano with Reine Gianoli and harmony with Georges Dandelot. He also studied counterpoint in private lessons with Andrée Vaurabourg. After he graduated in 1951, he started teaching piano at the École Normale de Musique, where he remained for eight years. In 1954, he took part in the famously influential Darmstadt summer courses, which inspired him to begin composing. He also married Jeanne Bayet and became a French Citizen. The following year, he attended master classes taught by the pianist Walter Gieseking. Beginning in 1957, Boucourechliev focused more seriously on his career as a composer. He began taking composition lessons with Luciano Berio and Bruno Maderna in Milan, and he composed his Musique à trois. From this time, he also wrote Texte I, Piano Sonata, and Texte II. These innovative works utilize aleatory concepts such as allowing the performer to spontaneously choose musical elements including dynamics, rhythm, and pitch. He preferred the input of the performer and audience over Cage's concept of chance as a deciding factor. The Archipels series of compositions from 1967 to 1971 solidified Boucourechliev's reputation as a composer in this genre. The series explores the concept of choice even further, with large graphic scores that were inspired by nautical charts. Faces, from 1972, features two conducted ensembles, and the conductors make musical decisions based on their interactions. From 1974 to 1976, he was employed at the Paris Conservatoire as Olivier Messiaen's assistant, followed by seven years at the University of Aix-en-Provence as a musicology professor. In the mid-1970s, his interests shifted to composing vocal music, and he also became more active as a writer. He contributed scholarly articles and music criticism to several journals, and many of these writings are available in the collection "Dire la musique," which was published in 1995. Throughout the 1980s, he continued writing, and he composed vocal and chamber music. He was a guest lecturer at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris from 1986 to 1987, and in 1995 he composed his final work, Trois Fragments de Michel Ange, for soprano, flute & piano. Boucourechliev was 72 years old when he passed away in Paris on November 13, 1997. ~ RJ Lambert, Rovi