N°20/58 is a piece by Heiner Goebbels written for Erwan. It reflects the composer's curiosity for the performer's stage presence, as well as his desire to work on the perception of sounds as much as the sounds themselves. Thus, N°20/58 is a piece written for a moving ringer. Created outdoors in a location chosen by Heiner, Erwan approached the audience in a slow ascent on foot that physically put his performing body to the test. The music gradually revealed the public space, making it ring with the bagpipe's familiar power.
Then, the composer and musician worked together on an adaptation for a seated audience in a closed hall. The piper then finds himself outside again, outside the hall, to start playing. It's then up to him to find a way of getting closer to the ears that are listening to him, and to render this piece for each venue and each audience. The quotation of two Bach Arias, linked together by a multiplication of trills, provides him with a score to guide his way.
Eliane Radigue, on the other hand, was inspired, on discovering this instrument, to contain the sound volume of the bagpipes to impose an intimate and delicate relationship that characterizes her work. It's no longer a question of composing in an ample movement, but of writing to reveal a reduced space thanks to held sounds and the harmonics that reveal themselves. Erwan is seated on a quasi-static chair, very close to the audience.
Eliane continues to search with this piece for, in her words, "a sound universe in its integrity, one in which each person, each listener, can hear, find, rediscover and create his or her own inner music, letting themselves be lulled and traveling endlessly".
Two Pages by Philip Glass was originally conceived as a piano continuum. By transposing it for his bagpipes, Erwan plays with the amplitude he finds between the continuous breath allowed by the bag and the drones, and the velocity of his fingers. Two Pages becomes a score that allows him to work his instrument extensively. The sound of the bagpipes takes up all the space until it becomes obsessive, obsessive until it stops short, to surprise once again.
Production
Offshore (Erwan Keravec's company)
Two Pages by Philip Glass
© 1968 Dunvagen Music Publishers Inc. Used by Permission
Coproduction
Schlossmediale Werdenberg (CH) (commissioned from Heiner Goebbels)
With financial support from
La DRAC Bretagne ; La Région Bretagne ; Adami - "365" program ; Sacem - support for the creation of contemporary music ; Fonpeps - support for employment in the phonographic publishing sector.
Home in residence
Théâtre National de Bretagne (TNB - Rennes ) ; GMEM
Program created in 2019 at Le Vivier, Montreal (QC, CA)
Erwan Keravec
bagpiper
Erwan Keravec is a Scottish piper, composer and improviser. His research into peripheral sounds and the ways in which he plays and listens to his instrument, far removed from his native culture, has led him to explore improvised music, from free jazz to noise, and to build up a repertoire of contemporary music for solo bagpipe, trio with voice and choir. Curious about movement, relationships and situations conducive to reinvention, he also composes, plays and improvises for dance.
Initiated by luthier and piper Jorj Botuha, and trained in traditional Scottish bagpipe playing techniques and repertoires, Erwan Keravec began his career with Bagad Roñsed Mor de Lokoal Mendon, and with his brother Guénolé Keravec on the bombard. From 1996, he explored free jazz and improvised music with La Marmite Infernale, the big band of ARFI - Association à la Recherche d'un Folklore Imaginaire - [Coeff 116 - 1997]. As part of ARFI, he takes part in the Guanabara program [2005] and plays in the Baron Samedi band. In parallel with his adventure with the Niou Bardophones - a quartet made up of the bagpipe-bombarde duo, a baritone saxophone and drums - and the release of the Air de rien [2005], Champ d'âne [2008] and Sages comme des fous [2013] albums, he improvises with trumpeter Jean-Luc Cappozzo [Air brut - 2010], and signs the Outside the budaga [2010] album with Romain Baudoin, Jérôme Renault and Joan Francès Tisner.
In 2009, he met Basque singer Beñat Achiary, with whom he created Ametsa [2011]. Since 2007, he has been refining his research into bagpipes far removed from his native culture with the Urban Pipes I [2007] and Urban Pipes II [2011] projects, for which he composes and improvises solo, with his brother Guénolé or with Beñat Achiary. To clarify his intentions, he commissions composers with absolutely no knowledge of the instrument to write the works for solo bagpipe that make up the Nu Piping program [since 2011]: to date, he has initiated 13 works for solo bagpipe by Sébastien Bérenger, Bernard Cavanna, Benjamin de la Fuente, Xavier Garcia, Lars Kynde, Heiner Goebbels, Philippe Leroux, Zad Moultaka, François Rossé, François Sarhan and Susumu Yoshida. For the Sonneurs quartet - made up of the sound instruments of the Breton tradition (bagpipes, bombarde, biniou-koz and trélombarde [since 2015], he has been developing a program with Pierre-Yves Macé, Wolfgang Mitterer, Samuel Sighicelli, Susumu Yoshida and Frédéric Aurier [in 2019 for a piece with the Béla quartet].
At the same time, he has been developing the VOX program [since 2013], for bagpipes and voices (soprano and baritone) with Oscar Bianchi, Philippe Leroux, José-Manuel López López, Oscar Strasnoy. This program will be extended to Extended VOX [2019] with Les Cris de Paris - a choir of 24 singers led by Geoffroy Jourdain - through commissions from Bernhard Lang and Wolfgang Mitterer. At the same time, he created Blind [2015], a piece for four blindfolded instrumentalists and spectators, and led the Revolutionary birds project [2015] with Tunisian singer Mounir Troudi and percussionist Wassim Halal. Taking a closer look at experimental music, he collaborates with Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson [Luft - 2015], imagining a meeting with their respective groups Sonneurs and Fire! He also formed the trio White Sands with guitarist Julien Desprez and percussionist Will Guthrie [creation 2019].
He multiplies his collaborations in the choreographic field, writing, performing or improvising with Gaëlle Bourges [Le Marin acéphale - 1999, Homothétie 949 with the group Raoul Batz - 2002, À mon seul désir - 2014, Conjurer la peur - 2017, Ce que tu vois - 2018], Cécile Borne [Robes fanées - 2008], Boris Charmatz [Enfant - 2011], Emmanuelle Huynh [Huynh/Keravec - 2015], Mickaël Phelippeau [membre fantôme - 2016], Alban Richard [Breathisdancing - 2017]. He improvises with Boris Charmatz and Daniel Linehan.
In 2019, he expands the program for solo bagpipe with Goebbels/Radigue/Glass with n°28/50 by Heiner Goebbels [premiere 2018 - Festival Schlossmediale Werdenberg - Switzerland], OCCAM OCEAM XXVII by Éliane Radigue [premiere 2019 - Le Vivier - Montreal - Canada] and Two pages - adaptation for bagpipe in C of the work by Philip Glass. Between 2020 and 2022, he expands the quartet program with pieces by Otomo Yoshihide [premiere January 2020 - Philharmonie de Paris], Dror Feiler [premiere September 2020 - Kunsfestspiele, Hannover, Germany], Jessica Ekomane, Philip Glass's Music in Similar Motion [December 2021, Instants Fertiles festival - Athénor, St-Nazaire], Laura Bowler and Géraldine Foucault [premiere October 2022 at sound festival, Aberdeen, Scotland].
In 2022, he undertakes a revival of Terry Riley's celebrated piece In C, in immersive form. IN C // 20 SONNEURS [premiered September 2022 at CENTQUATRE-Paris], places the audience at the center of a circle 20 meters in diameter, formed by 20 pipers and bombarders. This piece is also an opportunity for luthiers Tudual Hervieux and Jorj Bothua to develop new instruments.
In 2024, Erwan Keravec will continue his research into repetitive music with the program 8 SONNEURS POUR PHILIP GLASS, consisting of 4 pieces written in 1969 (Two pages, Music in Fifths, Music in Contrary Motion, Music in Similar Motion) and performed by an ensemble of 8 pipers and bombarders.
Friche la Belle de Mai (Petit Plateau)
41 Jobin Street13003
Marseille
Duration
approx. 1h00
Prices per concert
Full: 8€
Reduced: 6€*
*Young people aged 12-25, students, jobseekers, social security recipients, intermittent workers, senior citizens aged 65 and over - with proof of age.
Free admission for Modulations loyalty card holders (by reservation only)
Practical information
Latecomers will not be admitted to the concert hall, as some shows - at the request of the artistic teams - do not tolerate late entry.
Ticketing
Online: gmem-cncm.mapado.com
By e-mail: billetterie@gmem.org
As part of Modulations
What are Modulations?
Concerts, performances, regular events...
In other words, a season organized by the GMEM.
2nd semester dates:
20/01/26- 17/02 - 17/03 - 22/03 - 14/04 - 10/05
Erwan Keravec
bagpipes
Géraldine Foucault
stage management
Yves Godin
lighting design
Program
Two Pages (1969)
by Philippe Glass
N°20/58 (2018)
by Heiner Goebbels
OCCAM OCEAN, OCCAM XXVII (2019)
by Eliane Radigue