The GMEM

Appointed since 2011 as director of the GMEM - Centre national de création musicale de Marseille, Christian Sebille is both a director of the structure and a composer.

In 1983, Christian Sebille began studying electroacoustic music with Jean Schwartz and Philippe Prévost (Ircam), and then in 1987 mixed music with Luc Ferrari at the Muse en Circuit. In 1993, he founded Césaré in Reims, which became a National Center for Musical Creation in 2006, promoting research on diversity and on new forms of (re)presentation of musical creation.

Christian Sebille's catalog includes more than sixty vocal, instrumental, electroacoustic and mixed works, including a chamber opera(L'alleluiah - Georges Bataille - State commission), numerous pieces dedicated to theater or choreography (Jean Deloche, Nadège Mac Leay, Emmanuelle Huynh...) as well as a commission from the Limoge Opera for orchestra, choir, three percussion instruments, electric guitar and three voices. From 1999 to the present, he has created a large cycle of musical installations (series entitled Miniatures), the eleventh of which, commissioned by the City of Dijon, is particularly ambitious, as is the thirteenth, conceived for the Château d'If in Marseille.

His research is essentially directed towards the notion of space and movement. He enjoys mixing and confronting other artistic disciplines, as well as new forms of (re)presentation of contemporary music at the borders of concert, installation, cinema and performance. 

He collaborates with many artists from other artistic disciplines, notably with Francisco Ruiz De Infante (video artist). Christian Sebille develops a computerized lutherie which allows him to invest in the field of improvisation in France as well as abroad (Alex Grillo, Didier Petit, Sylvain Kassap, Pablo Cueco, Philippe Foch, Matt Bourne, Chris Sharkey, Christophe de Bezanac...).

C Barré, an instrumental ensemble under the artistic and musical direction of Sébastien Boin, is the result of a meeting between 12 musicians. This singular group, currently associated with the GMEM - Centre national de création musicale, is made up of rich, passionate personalities deeply invested in the creation and dissemination of contemporary repertoire.

The predominance of plucked strings, as well as instruments whose use was only exceptional until recently, gives the ensemble a distinct personality within today's musical landscape. Based in Marseille, which is both the first port and the oldest city in France, it is easy to notice C Barré's regular attachment to the composers of the Mediterranean basin.

Wishing to share its taste for creation with an ever-widening public, C Barré undertakes numerous awareness-raising and transmission actions. In this sense, the ensemble devotes part of its work to the training of young audiences, essential to the development of contemporary music. Among these, the Ensemble is launching in 2021 its travelling project Palimpseste for which it carries out musical walks in rural or urban areas, the result of real surveys carried out in each territory, at the end of which the inhabitants and the musicians of C Barré meet on stage for participative creations.

C Barré is producing a first monographic recording dedicated to the composer Frédéric Pattar, to be released in 2020 by empreinte digitale. A second monographic recording dedicated to the young Basque-Spanish composer Mikel Urquiza, with the participation of the Neue Vocalsolisten, will be released in February 2023 on the same label, on the occasion of the festival Présences 2023.

For the 2023-2024 season, C Barré is preparing with the Neue Vocalsolisten of Stuttgart the creation of a large-scale work by the composer Francesca Verunelli. This new project, entitled Songs and Voices, will be performed at the Venice Biennale, and will be heard at the Eclat festival in Stuttgart, at the GRAME Biennale des Musiques Exploratoires, at the GMEM Propagations festival and at the Ircam ManiFeste festival.

The GMEM and the ensemble C Barré have joined forces to pool their human and technical resources. The objective is to :

- to promote the presence of creative music in Marseille, the Bouches-du-Rhône department and the southern region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
- to facilitate regional, national and international networking - to deploy common resources for productions

Beyond that, the two parties agree on a common will to join forces in a broader spirit of cooperation in order to meet their common missions towards musical creation, reception and training of the public.