For the opening concert of the Percussive Arts Society festival in Beijing, China, Les Percussions de Strasbourg will perform the third movement of Avant, pendant et pourtant, a piece by Camille Pépin commissioned by Les Percussions de Strasbourg in 2025.
“Over the past decade, the composer (born in 1990) has made a name for herself on the international stage with a primarily orchestral repertoire that reveals the combined influences of late 19th-century French Impressionist music and the American minimalist movement. While the density of her symphonic work may make her penchant for repetitive music less apparent to the casual listener, Avant, pendant, et pourtant brilliantly showcases it. This is the very focus of this commission by Les Percussions de Strasbourg, around which the MINIMAL project was developed. Drawing on the composer’s admiration for Steve Reich’s work, Minh-Tâm Nguyen commissioned a piece from him featuring an instrumentation borrowed from that of the famous Mallet Quartet: two marimbas and two vibraphones. This is the project’s second focal point: embracing a recent work that has instantly become a classic of the minimalist repertoire—here treated as a benchmark—to gauge both the quintessence of the genre and what the ensemble’s sensibility can bring to it.”
Vincent Théval
Commissioned and produced by: Les Percussions de Strasbourg
MINIMAL received support from the CNM for recording production and from SACEM for concert commissioning and production.
⏰ Concert at 19h30
🎭 BinFen theater, Xicheng cultural center, Beijing, China
🎫 For more information, contact the PAS in Beijing on WeChat
With support from the Institut français de Chine Faguowenhua, the Centre National de la Musique, the Maison de la Musique Contemporaine, and Spedidam.