For an ensemble of 8 musicians and a fearful acoustic device.
"Our relationship to nature determines how we make community." Philippe Descola
Inspired by anthropologist Philippe Descola's Beyond Nature and Culture, which describes the relationship between human communities and their environment, Topos is first and foremost a population of hidden sound agents surrounding visitors. Modelled on the behaviour of animal populations, they listen to each other and to us.
Topos organizes encounters, guided by an ensemble of eight musicians, between this community of "sound animals" and visitors to the site. Positioned around the audience, the musicians perform the four-part score (Nature - Animated Objects - Dream Beings - Analogies), acting as "go-betweens" between the community of the public and that of the device's population of sound agents.
After these encounters, the sound installation keeps track of the musical performance and continues to develop independently until May 31 at the Mucem.
- Co-produced by
Le Mucem
Delegated production
GMEM - Centre national de création musicale
Commissioned and co-produced by
Ircam-Centre Pompidou, GMEM, Fondation Camargo
Thanks
Julie Chenot, Francis Talin, Gilles Panzani
Born in 1960, Jean-Luc Hervé studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris with Gérard Grisey. He obtained a first prize in composition. His doctoral thesis in aesthetics as well as a research conducted at Ircam will be the occasion for a theoretical reflection on his work as a composer. His residency at the Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto is a decisive turning point in his work.
The Itinerary
L'Itinéraire is one of Europe's leading ensembles for musical creation. A veritable incubator for composers and performers, the collective has shared the adventure of several generations of creators daring to explore all the limits of sound, from acoustic saturation to micro and macro-phonic amplification, right through to the unheard-of in electronics.
Since its foundation, the ensemble has premiered hundreds of works by such outstanding artists as Grisey, Lévinas, Murail and Dufourt, as well as Scelsi, Harvey and Romitelli.
Today, thanks to its top-level soloists, L'Itinéraire maintains a spirit of adventure and artistic excellence, tirelessly exploring the unknown territories of sound. It constantly questions the circumstances of musical creation, from writing to instrumental practices, from the stage to multimedia, thus participating in the innovations of young artistic creation in all its forms.
An internationally renowned ensemble, L'Itinéraire has recently performed in Monaco, Tallinn, Tel-Aviv, Venice, Stuttgart, Berlin, Stockholm, Salzburg, Bogota, Medellin, New York and Dartmouth.
Mucem - Museum of Civilization and the Mediterranean
Fort Saint Jean13002
Marseille
Thursday, May 12:
Concert > 7 p.m.
Open during and after the festival from Friday May 13 to Monday May 23 inclusive:
> opening days and times on site: www.mucem.org
RATES
Evening pass: €15
Reduced : 11 €
Le Mucem rates including the 2 concerts "Topos" at 7:00 pm & "Georg" at 8:30 pm
DURATION
approx. 40 min
Jean-Luc Hervé
composition
Charles Bascou
computer music production
Ensemble Itinéraire
instrumental ensemble
Julie Brunet-Jailly
flute
Sylvain Devaux
oboe
Pierre Génisson
clarinet
Christophe Bredeloup, Benoît Masson
percussion
Anne Mercier
violin
Lucia Peralta
alto
Myrtille Hetzel
cello
Benjamin Matuszewski, Jean-Philippe Lambert
Ircam scientific collaboration (Ircam-stms sound-music-movement interaction team)
Emmanuel Fléty, Djellal Chalabi, Yann Bouloiseau
prototyping and manufacturing of sound agents Ircam
Damien Ripoll
sound engineer