Le Noir de l’Etoile

Creation : March 16th, 1991 in the Halle Schaerbeeck, Festival Ars Musica, Bruxelles
Music and conception : Gérard Grisey
Number of musicians : 6 percussionnists placed around the audience.
Ordered by the Percussions de Strasbourg and the French Ministère de la Culture

The Noir de l’Etoile is dedicated to my son Raphaël with affection and to the Percussions de Strasbourg

The unprecedented and irreplaceable aspect of the live transmission in the concert hall of these imperturbable cosmic clocks which have travelled across several light years…

Their unexpected confrontation with music, which not only prepares their "entry" onto a musical and theatrical stage, but whose whole temporal organisation Is the product of their speed of rotation…

Their integration into a spatialized form of music by the positioning of the six percussions and speakers around the audience…

The staging and lighting of these extinguished stars using appropriate projection and lighting devices…

The at once musical, visual, theatrical, but also festive and didactic character of a moving and exceptional event."

Gérard Grisey