Each season, OCCURRENCES supports three artists in creating small-scale, touring musical productions designed to reach emerging audiences: young children and young audiences, seniors, and audiences with limited access. These works are designed for a variety of settings (daycare centers, schools, nursing homes, community centers, rural community centers, etc.), using lightweight technical equipment that promotes mobility and intimacy.

OCCURRENCES is based on long-term support, combining research and production residencies, knowledge-sharing sessions, workshops, meetings, and outreach activities throughout the region. Artists are fully engaged in building relationships with audiences, making these interactions a driving force behind artistic creation and experimentation.

By promoting mobility, the blending of artistic forms, and collaboration between venues, OCCURRENCES affirms a strong conviction: creative music is built on sharing, listening, and engaging closely with local residents.

Statement of Intent

“Chante le diable”
Clara Barbier-Serrano
A musical performance based on a draw of five cards from the Tarot de Marseille. Each card is drawn by a member of the audience, who, after a brief introduction, will receive a song. The show consists of five texts, performed in different styles depending on the cards drawn. Since there are 22 cards in total, the same text may reappear several times in different “styles,” and each 20-minute session will be unique. The vocal styles will range from lyrical to experimental, including singer-songwriter, jazz, slam poetry, and others as the mood strikes. The lyrics will explore dreams, secrets, hopes, and questions—the kind one might ask the cards. I hope they’ll be funny at times, always feminist, and always poetic.

Être eaux
Gwen Rouger
A piece lasting approximately 20–25 minutes for sampler, composed and performed by Gwen Rouger.
An immersive piece on the theme of water. Speakers are positioned around a group of audience members/performers. The musician invites them to move through the space based on their responses to poetic and philosophical questions about their daily relationship with water. Depending on the nature of their movements, Gwen Rouger plays her samples of prepared piano sounds differently using controllers and the Aftertouch system on her keytar. Rich in texture, the music is organic, unfolding in a constant flow. Like water molecules, everything here “circulates”; there are echoes and connections between the movement of the audience and that of the music, both in its very essence and in its spatial arrangement.
30-minute session with the option to hold multiple sessions throughout the day (maximum: 5, with breaks).
Recommended age: 10 and up.
Co-production and musical commission
Théâtre de Vanves—a state-subsidized theater of national interest in “art and creation,” as part of the DGCA–Sacem associate composer program

Title to be announced...
Julia Sinoimeri
Julia Sinoimeri presents a twenty-minute piece that is written and transformed live with the audience, based on invented melodies that evoke childhood memories. The composed tunes will be reinvented and modified through improvisation at each performance. The accordion blends with the voice and everyday objects transformed into sound-making instruments. The audience sits in a defined space that is the same as the musician’s. The objects are scattered on the floor like toys in a child’s play area and are brought to life through sound as the piece unfolds. The audience is invited to share in this musical moment by handling the objects, creating sound, and becoming creators and improvisers themselves. The piece will reflect those who create it together during each performance, renewing and transforming itself with every performance.