Pierre Estève

Pierre Estève discovered music at the age of four and entered the Avignon Conservatory two years later to learn to play the piano. As a young teenager, he bought his first electric guitar and then synthesizers. Immersed in influences ranging from classical music to rock, he forged an eclectic musical taste and skills in those years, wrote his first compositions and soon began working in the studio.

After studying science, Pierre devoted himself fully to music, winning several gold medals from the Avignon and Montpellier conservatoires in guitar, fugue, counterpoint, harmony, musical analysis, singing and chamber music. In 1987, he signed with WEA as a solo artist. However, he was also interested in music for film, and composed a great deal for the audiovisual industry. In 1995, he began a collaboration with Cryo Interactiveand produced the soundtracks for many of the studio's games, starting with Dragon Lore II (1996), for which he designed an engine that allowed him to use his own sound samples while respecting the memory constraints of the time. He then signed with Stéphane Picq the soundtrack ofAtlantis Secrets d'un monde oublié (1997), creating the music of an imaginary civilisation and culture using his extensive collection of world instruments.

At the end of 1996, Pierre co-founded the Shooting Stara pioneering French publisher of music for video games, through which albums of his original soundtracks are published, some of which include CD-ROM tracks with the games' original illustrations. In 1997, he created the music for the pioneering virtual universe The Second World (1997), followed byAtlantis IIChroniques de la Lune noire (1999) and many other titles in the following years. He recently released the album Atlantis Evolution (2020), sixteen years after the release of the game, following a process of rearrangement and remastering. At the same time, Pierre initiated research and composition work on biological and mineral sound materials, which resulted in the collection of albums Made Instill in progress.

Since 2000, in addition to his uninterrupted compositional activity for games, fiction and documentaries, he has designed interactive sound installations combining instruments and natural sound elements (stone, wood, wind, water, etc.) augmented by digital sensors. Combining his experience in video games with his interest in nature and new technologies, these devices form immersive sound and visual environments with which the public can interact, directly influencing their evolution. This collaborative dimension comes into its own in the project Flowers of Change.

In the continuation of his series Made InHe is currently recording an album in prehistoric and geological caves, based directly on the acoustics of stalactites and stalagmites, mineral matter shaped by time scales extending far beyond the human odyssey.