Launched in 2020, Ircam's Musiques-Fictions collection offers a unique literary and sound experience, combining a contemporary text with a musical creation, in an immersive diffusion system.... Installed under Ircam's 49-speaker ambisonic diffusion dome, reconstituted in the GMEM Module, the listener is invited to a listening experience in which the imagination is stimulated by a sound environment with extensive expressive possibilities, enabling the reproduction of a
listening situation close to that of the real world, from the great spectacular stage to the most minute details of intimate discourse.
This Music-Fiction entitled "Un pas de chat sauvage" was inspired by the West Indian artist María Martínez, singer, guitarist and dancer nicknamed la Malibran noire.
Marie NDiaye's story features an academic narrator researching this character. Her work is disrupted by the appearance in her life of a singer who may well have something to do with the artist Nadar photographed in his heyday, but also in his decline.
Production
Ircam-Centre Pompidou
Support
Sacem ; CNM
Based on
"Un pas de chat sauvage" by Marie NDiaye (2019) © Coédition Flammarion / Musées d'Orsay et de l'Orangerie
In partnership with
la Friche la Belle de Mai
This text was written on the occasion of the exhibition "The Black Model" held in 2019 at the Musée d'Orsay.
"Writing for, with and around a text by Marie NDiaye has been a dream of mine for years. Ever since I started reading her, and even before I met her. We were at the Villa Médicis in 1990-91. She was incredibly young and already a master of her art. It was during my weekly visits to Joseph, painted in 1819 by Géricault, that I discovered Marie's text, commissioned by the Musée d'Orsay for the "Le Modèle noir" exhibition (2019). The singer, guitarist and dancer Maria Martinez, known as La Malibran noire, was also a model in the mid-19th century, like Joseph, and photographed by Nadar. This is the first time, I believe, that Marie NDiaye has put a musician at the center of one of her books. And perhaps also the first time that the narrator says she wants to become a black woman. As a child, I too wanted to be a black woman. My mother patiently explained to me that it was impossible, on two counts, born as I was. To say that I was spellbound by this text, and even more so when Jeanne Balibar gave such a striking musical interpretation of it that she can't be at the center of my music, since she is the music itself. My music is therefore simply a climate, a resonant or pulsating breath around these phrased/sung words. It is made up of short fragments that are like fleeting signals marking the points of the triangle formed by these three female characters linked by memory,
the desire or fear to be other. Music as the imprint of ghostly destinies. I think, or rather, I intimately feel Marie NDiaye's book, and consequently our attempt at music, as a tribute to that valiant artist Maria Martinez, attractive because exotic, noticed because talented, but mocked because black. If we consider that David Lescot, author and director, is also a musician and composer, and that he too created a masterly portrait for the stage of another black singer, Nina Simone, we'll understand that there are many interwoven threads in this Musique-Fiction #6." - Gérard Pesson
"Marie NDiaye's text retraces the little-known career of singer Maria Martinez in a highly sophisticated, roundabout way. It's a vertiginous investigation, a matter of projection, of triple transference, the transference of one woman to another... It's subtle but heady, like Gérard Pesson's music, or certain perfumes in Baudelaire's poems. Think of this text as a score, with Gérard Pesson's music revealing and enhancing its musicality.
And Jeanne Balibar would be not only the voice, but also part of the instrumentarium for this musical performance of a literary text. Her interpretation would provide the material for an orchestra of words, sounds and breaths. For Jeanne Balibar is constantly in the present: she performs, she invents and she disconcerts, even when she reads; this can only be listened to very closely, and even more than closely. It's all inside.
- David Lescot
Marie NDiaye
Writer
Born in Pithiviers (France) on June 4, 1967, Marie NDiaye studied linguistics at the Sorbonne and was awarded a scholarship by the Académie de France to study at the Villa Médicis in Rome. She began writing at an early age, around twelve. At seventeen, she published her first novel, "Quant au riche avenir", with Éditions de Minuit. Her novel "En famille" (In the Family) was a success when published in 1990, followed by "Rosie Carpe" (Rosie Carpe) in 2001, which won her the Prix Femina. Although Marie NDiaye is first and foremost a novelist, she has also written for the stage, notably "Papa doit manger", a play that is now part of the Comédie Française repertoire. She has also published a collection of short stories, "Tous mes amis" (2004), and three novels for young readers ("La Diablesse et son enfant" (2000), "Le Paradis de Prunelle" (2003) and "Le Souhait" (2005)). She also contributed to the screenplay for Claire Denis's film "White Material".
Gérard Pesson
Composer
Born in 1958 in Torteron (Cher). After studying literature and musicology at the Sorbonne, then at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, Gérard Pesson founded the contemporary music magazine "Entretemps" in 1986. He was a resident at the Académie de France in Rome (Villa Médicis) from 1990 to 1992. Laureate of the Studium International de Composition de Toulouse (1986), of "Opéra Autrement" (1989), of the Tribune Internationale de l'Unesco (1994), he was awarded the Prince Pierre de Monaco Foundation prize in 1996.
His works have been performed by numerous ensembles and orchestras in Europe: Ensemble 2e2m, Ensemble intercontemporain, l'Instant Donné, Ensemble Cairn, Ensemble Modern, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Recherche, Ensemble Ictus, Alter Ego, Accroche Note, Erwartung, Orchestre National de Lyon, Orchestre national d'Île-de-France, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. His opera "Forever Valley", commissioned by T&M and based on a libretto by Marie Redonnet, premiered in April 2000 at the Théâtre des Amandiers in Nanterre. In 2004, he published his diary "Cran d'arrêt du beau temps" with Éditions Van Dieren. His opera "Pastorale", based on Honoré d'Urfé's "L'Astrée", was commissioned by the Stuttgart Opera and premiered in a concert version in May 2006 (stage premiere June 2009, at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris). His concerto, "Future is a faded song", was premiered in 2012 by Alexandre Tharaud and the Zurich Orchestra conducted by Pierre-André Valade. In 2019, he will create the opera "Trois Contes" at the Opéra de Lille, directed by David Lescot. He has been professor of composition at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique de Paris since 2006.
David Lescot
Author, director, musician
David Lescot's writing, like his stage work, seeks to blend theater with non-dramatic forms, particularly music. His play "Un Homme en faillite", which he staged at the Comédie de Reims and Théâtre de la Ville in Paris in 2007, won the Syndicat national de la critique prize for best French-language creation. The following year, the SACD awarded him the Nouveau Talent Théâtre prize. For L'Européenne, he was awarded the Grand Prix de littérature dramatique in 2008. That same year, he created "La Commission centrale de l'Enfance", a spoken, sung and chanted account of the summer camps set up by Communist Jews in France, which he performed alone, accompanied by a 1964 Czechoslovak electric guitar. The show toured France and abroad for five seasons. David Lescot won the Molière for theatrical revelation for this show in 2009. In 2011, he staged his first opera: "The Rake's Progress Stravinsky" at the Opéra de Lille. This was followed in 2013 by Haydn's "Il Mondo Della Luna" at the MC93-Bobigny, with singers from the Atelier lyrique de l'Opéra Bastille, and in 2014 by Mozart's "La Finta Giardiniera" again at the Opéra de Lille and then at the Opéra de Dijon, with Emmanuelle Haïm conducting. In 2019, he will direct Gérard Pesson's lyrical creation, trois contes. David Lescot is an associate artist at the Théâtre de la Ville. His plays have been published by Éditions Actes Sud-Papiers, translated, published and performed in several languages.
Robin Meier
Computer music director
Artist and composer Robin Meier is interested in the emergence of intelligence, whether natural, artificial, human or non-human.
Referred to as "maestro of the swarm" by Nature or simply "pathetic" on Vimeo, his work is presented in France and abroad: Palais de Tokyo, Centre Pompidou, Art Basel, Shanghai Biennale, Colomboscope Sri Lanka... Since 2018, he has been a Fellow of the Istituto Svizzero di Roma and has been teaching sound art at the Beaux-Arts de Berne since 2021.
Friche la Belle de Mai (the Module)
41 Jobin Street13003
Marseille
RATES
Full: 8€
Reduced: 6€ *
* Young people aged 12 - 25, students, jobseekers, recipients of minimum social benefits, intermittent workers, seniors aged 65 and over - with proof of age.
Pass Musiques-Fictions * : 10€
* (giving access to two sessions in the same evening: Musique-Fiction 6 + Music-Fiction 7)
DURATION
50 min.
Marie NDiaye
text
Gérard Pesson
music
David Lescot
adaptation
Robin Meier
computer music production Ircam
Clément Cerles
sound engineering
with the voice of
Jeanne Balibar
music recorded by
l'ensemble Cairn
composed of
Laurent Camatte
viola
Caroline Cren
piano
Ayumi Mori
clarinette
FannyVicens
accordion
Christelle Séry
guitar