By Eric Chapelle

The Importance of Arts, Culture, The Creative Process and how this project resonates with you
Nature became my refuge early on while I lived at a children’s home named Moulin de Senlis in Montgeron, France. I lived there in the mid- to late 1950s. 
The connection between nature and music became a profound force for me while I lived at this institution. Part of my daily routine was to find some inner comfort by walking alone along a creek at the back of the premises. Walking in nature became a way to deal with the uncertainties of my early childhood. 
The first powerful aesthetic experience I had with music took place during one of those excursions along the creek. It was a breezy afternoon, and I was about six years old. The temperature was just right, and the scenery was stunning, as if everything had been gilded with iridescent light--even the cows grazing in the field on the other side of the creek, which was lined with poplar trees. In that moment, when the wind was rattling the leaves on the trees, I looked up, and instead of just hearing the wind, which sounds extremely beautiful by itself, I heard music instead. It sounded like brass, woodwinds, and strings all together in a majestic setting. Yes, I was startled, but right there and then I knew something profound had happened, and that music would be an integral part of my life from then on. 
After that experience, everything changed for me, including the ways I perceived the world around me and myself. It profoundly altered my way of thinking. It added a sense of awe to everything that I was sensing in all my perceptions. It was a way to connect to the beauty of what nature is and how it affects all of us on this planet. The connection to nature gave me greater awareness of the need to respect our natural surroundings. 
Since I was at Montgeron in the 1950s and came back in 2002 and then again in 2007, I was able to witness the changes to the environment over half a century. The most prevalent change was the way that urbanization had altered the rural ecosystem of this place, now an exurb of Paris. The actual buildings of the institution were falling apart, and destitute families had moved in, making the place their own. 
It was the combination of seeing the degradation of the premises and the surrounding areas, an obvious manifestation of the breakdown of the ecosystems, that affected me the most. Humanity and nature were being deprived of their full potential. 
It was the experience of visiting the same location after many decades that sparked my artistic attempt to recreate my childhood experiences via the solo piano composition Place in Landscape Moulin de Senlis, which appears as Track 6 on my album Works for Solo Piano. I collaborated on this album with the pianist Michelle Schumann, who performed Moulin and all the other solo piano compositions on this album. 
I then went a step further and created a short film of images taken during the 1950’s while I was there, and when I returned in 2002 and 2007. I combined these and other images with the soundtrack of Place in Landscape Moulin de Senlis. 
This is what I’m submitting as my creative work: a short film entitled Place in Landscape Moulin de Senlis that sets the musical recording by Michelle Schumann to an image track that I created to go with the soundtrack. I spent months editing images to make this short film.

What was the inspiration for your creative work?
The short film Place in Landscape Moulin de Senlis is the outcome creative work that originally started with writing a solo piano composition with the same title that is the soundtrack to this short film. As noted above, the source and inspiration for this solo piano composition was a pension, or children's home, where I was placed at age three during the mid 1950s. The institution was called Moulin de Senlis, named after a derelict castle near Montgeron, France, dating back at least to the 15th century. I lived there with my brothers for several years. Our parents put us there under circumstances that I am still not exactly sure about. Yet, in the end, we were reunited with our parents and immigrated to Los Angeles several years later. The experience of being left at the Moulin de Senlis at such a young age profoundly affected me ever since, and over the years, I’ve contemplated the ordeal in various ways. What really intrigued me was the challenge of channeling my experiences and conveyed them in an artistic medium. And since I was already engrossed musically, teaching myself to play the piano early on, mostly by improvising, it made perfect sense to use that instrument for this project. Putting together a musical design for interpreting an intense experience in time that affected and continues to affect my psyche in a profound way was a huge challenge for me as a composer. I sought to make musical images develop into actual patterns and relationships in sound and movement in a temporal setting. It was only during the last few years that I thought about the connection between experiences that I’ve had in my life and the places where some of these experiences occurred. I have developed a genre in which I connect geographic place, personal experience, and musical expression. I call this set of works Place in Landscape. I start writing the solo piano composition Place in Landscape Moulin de Senlis in early 2021 and finished it in France in November of 2022. At the time that I was writing this work, I was in the process of working on my solo piano album Works for Solo Piano, collaborating with pianist Michelle Schumann. The album was completed the following summer. After I commercially released Works for Solo Piano in October of 2023, I kept thinking about doing a short film to the music, since it was the longest piece on the album at 8:16 minutes long. Most of the images in the video were provided by someone I knew at the pension. When I returned to France in 2007 for a reunion of other children who were there with me in 1950s, I met one person whose mother was one of the caretakers, and she, the daughter, had been there at the same time I was. I visited her at her apartment in Paris, and there she showed me photo albums of the place. I was excited to see these old pictures, and I immediately digitized them and added the images to my laptop. I also went to the children’s institution to see how it was in 2007 and took some videos and images again. I had other images taken in 2002, when I returned for the first time since the 50s. In the fall of 2023, I started editing all these images together over the solo piano composition as the soundtrack. After many months, I finally finished the short film and posted in On July 15, 2024, on my YouTube channel. My submission is this short film.

Tell us something about the natural world that you love and don’t wish to lose. What are your thoughts on the kind of world we are leaving for the next generation?
The second part of my childhood took place in Los Angeles in the 1960s. One of the activities that I loved the most was going to the beach in Santa Monica and the adjacent beaches. I loved to go swimming and run on the beach, playing with the incoming waves. One of the memorable events was watching the sand crabs popping up on the beach after a wave retreated. There were thousands of them. It was fun trying to chase them before they burrowed back into the sand. 
Now, today, when I return to the same beach, the sand crabs are mostly gone. I'm not sure about the reasons for the decline in the sand crab population, but it’s disheartening to see that taking place at that beach and other beaches all over the world. 
I went to Bermuda in 2022, and the same story there. No seagulls or dolphins anywhere. The fish population was almost non-existent when we went snorkeling just offshore.
My partner and I went to Sicily in 2024. Same story there. The ecosystems near the water were non-existent. 
In my teenage years, I went to Goa, India, in 1970, and it was pristine and beautiful. It was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen for a tropical beach. I went back to the same place in 1999, and I was really depressed to see how much it has changed. I’m sure if I went back today, I would notice even more changes. Lots of pollution everywhere, and again, the local ecosystem was damaged and almost gone compared to what I saw 29 years before. 
The oceans are not as healthy as they used to be. I hope we can find solutions to help the planet survive and prosper again. It’s going to be a challenge for the next generation to deal with fixing the obvious problems affecting all life on this planet.

Photo credit: Hannah Wojciehowski

Eric Chapelle is a composer and producer based in Austin, Texas.
With influences ranging from experimental music to 20th century classical compositions, Chapelle’s music is lyrical, impressionistic, and at times minimalistic all rolled into one. 

Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube