PERCUSTRA CONCERT – SOMBRE JOURNÉE, HUGUES DUFOURT
Thursday, June 8th 2023, 6:00PM and 8:00PM – Théâtre de Hautepierre
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Pupils from the schools Jacqueline and Brigitte, and the Collèges Erasme and Truffaut, as well as residents, families and workers from the Hautepierre district, took part in the “Percustra” collective musical creation workshops, organised and led by Pin-Cheng Chiu, Matthieu Benigno, Youjin Lee, Thibaut Weber and Gil Hyoungkwon, musicians from the Percussions de Strasbourg.
The Percustra concert is the result of this year’s workshop. The groups will perform the pieces they have created together, freely, during the workshops to write an original score. This is an opportunity for all the participants to show their work throughout the year to their friends and family in professional conditions.
Each concert is followed by a representation of Sombre Journée of Hugues Dufourt.
100 CYMBALS / BUT WHAT ABOUT THE NOISE OF CRUMPLING PAPER… – R.IKEDA / J.CAGE
Friday, July 21st 2023, 9:00PM — Fondation Gulbenkian, Lisbonne, Portugal
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Sunday, July 23rd 2023, 6:30PM and 9:30PM — Fondation Serralves, Porto, Portugal
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With 100 cymbals, Ryoji Ikeda dives us into the abyss of vibration. A unique listening experience.
Created in 2019 at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, in the sumptuous hall designed by architect Frank Gehry, 100 Cymbals is as much a stage performance as an audiovisual installation. Ryoji Ikeda highlights the rich potential of cymbals by following the thin line between noise and harmonic resonance. The seemingly rudimentary instrument, a convex disc made of an alloy of copper, brass and bronze, which is more commonly used to accentuate certain times of the measure, is transformed into a powerful polyphonic resource. The different modes of playing, more or less conventional, maintain a fusional – almost choral – sound and allow harmonic strata and other acoustic results to emerge within a process that a simple line could represent: an infinite crescendo, leading from an almost imperceptible murmur to the brilliance of the final fortississimo.
John Cage’s “But what about the noise of crumpling paper” celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dada co-founder Hans Arp, and was composed in 1986 for Les Percussion de Strasbourg. But Cage specified neither the number of players nor the durations, tempo or repetitions. There is only a system of five different punctuation marks that has to be reinterpreted for every performance. The Japanese sound and video artist Ryoji Ikeda has devised a new version of this conceptual score.
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LE NOIR DE L’ÉTOILE – GÉRARD GRISEY
Friday, July 28th 2023, 9:00PM — Jardin du Lautaret, Villar-d’Arène, Festival Messiaen au Pays de la Meije
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Le Noir de l’Étoile by Gérard Grisey is one of the most impressive pieces by the French spectralist composer. In this work, pulsars – “clocks of spacetime” – form the tonal and poetic point of departure for a monumental space-piece for six percussionists, carried by rotation, periodicity, deceleration and acceleration.
« Le Noir de l’Etoile is dedicated to my son Raphaël with affection and to the Percussions de Strasbourg. And I would also like to point out: 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
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BURNING BRIGHT – HUGUES DUFOURT
Saturday, July 29th 2023, 9:00PM — Salle du Dôme, Le Monêtier les Bains, Festival Messiaen au Pays de la Meije
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Written to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the percussion ensemble Percussions de Strasbourg, Burning Bright borrows its title from William Blake’s famous poem The Tyger, published in 1794.
Composed as one single piece, like an immense adagio in the manner of Bruckner, Burning Bright’s poetic vision breaks with the traditional techniques of demarcation, with all its contours and closures. The music rises in layers, or unfolds in abundant and meandering surges. The varying depths of the timbres, fading towards an indeterminate horizon, create their own resonant space. Sounds – swelling, diffusing, writhing – blend like fluids or gases. Working on timbre is but the art of retouching. The drift of coloured masses replaces the interplay of formal arrangements beloved of the last century. Friction takes over from customary percussion techniques.
Following Blake’s example, Burning Bright rallies elementary energies: a drama with neither narrative nor anecdote, its unity emerges through telluric rumblings. Not unlike the films of Stanley Kubrick, it uncovers a vast space, which could well become, despite the hopes of our times, a space of eternal confinement.
Hugues Dufourt
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