MEMENTO is a musical cycle that summons natural materials (leaves, stones, wood, sand, water, grass) and materials (metals, glass, wool, coal) and questions their power to become music or otherwise a meaningful sound. The music, at the beginning exclusively acoustic and instrumental, is little by little won by sounds which emanate from natural materials that an instrumentalist-performer manipulates on the stage and amplified by a particular microphony. These sounds, half concrete, half electronic, first appear as interludes and then gradually permeate the music itself.

The cycle involves 7 musicians, 1 percussionist-performer of electronic music and 1 conductor for the last two pieces of the cycle. MEMENTO is a set of 6 pieces, each one calling for a different instrumental formation.

The cycle refers to the plastic worlds of Jannis Kounellis, Giuseppe Penone, Claudio Parmiggiani and Richard Long, to art that attempts to measure a "gap": the gap between nature and the artistic gesture, between matter and its manufacture or transformation, between natural phenomena (fire, erosion) and human action (sculpting, digging, breaking, arranging), between nature and the places where art is inscribed. In a way, what unites the practices of these artists (and many others) is the inevitably vain attempt to measure man's meagre time against the yardstick of geological time.

The works referred to in the cycle are often in between: halfway between sculpture and installation, performance and painting, scenography and hanging.

Mentions
Biography(s)
MEMENTO
Jérôme Combier
Residence
Wed. 17 + Thu. May 18, 2023
Sat. 20 -- Fri. 26 May 2023
Tue. August 29 -- Fri. September 1, 2023
Distribution

Corentin Marillier
percussion

Cédric Jullion
flute (also piccolo, alto flute and bass flute)

Maroussia Gentet
piano

Ayumi Mori
clarinet (also bass clarinet)

André Feydy
trumpet

Fanny Vicens
accordion

Constance Ronzatti
violin

Guillaume Bourgogne
direction