20 novembre :

Concert d’improvisation à 20 heures de l’ONCEIM à la Maison de l’Ile de france de la Cité Universitaire Internationale.

Première partie : Concert des Ateliers d’Improvisation

22 novembre :

Festival HCMF (Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival) - 19h30 Programme :

– Christian Marclay (Switzerland, 1955) Constellation (2024)
– Genevieve Murphy (Scotland, 1988) Together We Feel And Alone We Experience (2024)

Christian Marclay (Switzerland, 1955) Constellation (2024) 25’ UK Premiere Whether through performance, installation, concerts, sculpture, or video, sound has always held a fundamental place in my artistic practice. Drawing on both our historical heritage through the use and manipulation of vinyl records, recordings, film soundtracks, and the emergence of new sounds by incorporating all sorts of “noise” I primarily seek to explore sound in its organic dimension. For this commission, in line with my Found In performances, where I arrive empty-handed in a city and harvest objects that will allow me to create a sound performance, I first wanted to gather sounds directly from the musicians of Onceim. They have developed techniques and expertise that allow them to significantly extend the sounds of their instruments, deploying strong artistic singularities and offering a great diversity of raw materials. Like a concrete music composer, after setting up a reservoir of sounds, I used and transformed this material to edit the music and elaborate the structure of the piece. I wanted to work above all on the new orchestration possibilities offered by this ensemble, that is, the exploration of orchestral timbres, textures carried collectively while relying on the unique sound of each musician. One particularly stimulating aspect in the parallel that can be drawn here between an electroacoustic work and an instrumental work is to see how, starting from a given material, a "sound object"musicians can manipulate their instruments directly to transform and alter sounds, similar to what one would do in a studio by manipulating tapes or recorded sounds.

My ambition, as the piece unfolds, is to be able to sculpt, alter, and knead this instrumental raw material while preserving its momentum and main characteristic, but by changing spectrum parameters as electronics would allow.

The physical, gestural embodiment of these transformations, their individual or collective handling, offers an organic dimension that particularly interests me for the development of orchestral textures. I am also committed to the notion of enjoyment for the musicians, both in the elaboration of sounds and the execution of the piece. My aim was to find the right involvement that allows the musician to fully engage and invest in the creative play, the development of textures, so that each performance is a game with ever-renewed pleasure. On a formal level, as in most of my works, starting from the assembly of disjointed elements with points of convergence, I sought to create a unified whole carrying its own poetics. In this context, I am not trying to erase the singularity of each but rather to highlight it in a play of perspective between them and to associate them to elaborate strong structural elements unfolding in a global environment. As a first starting point for this project, I delved into the representations of musical scores in the "still lifes"of the 16th and 17th centuries, as well as Cubist paintings (Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso) – both to extract fragments that will serve as a basis for the more melodic and harmonic elements of the piece, and to develop a perspective relationship between these more "traditional" musical elements and the more abstract and "noisy" foundation of the piece. © Christian Marclay (ed. hcmf//)

Genevieve Murphy (Scotland, 1988) Together We Feel And Alone We Experience (2024) 35’ UK Premiere This work explores the concept of ’individuality. As an artist I base my works around psychology, and, once I haveresearched in depth about a certain topic, I share that knowledge through my personal perspective. In all of my work I have come to understand that our emotions are universal, but our symptoms and ways of coping are individual.

In Together We Feel And Alone We Experience I attempt to realise this creatively by letting the audience hear the uniqueness of each instrument – and its musician in Onceim – while they attempt to sound like the bagpipes. Asking the musicians to sound like the characteristics of people – by trying to act the same, we in fact reveal our individuality more. The overall journey of the orchestra, syncing together at times and moving towards a climax, implies the shared emotion that we all feel. The composition does not begin with the bagpipes but rather with the orchestra, allowing us to hear individual instruments and combinations of sounds from different groups within Onceim. A compositional approach that I have found through improvising with musicians is to “be the bagpipes”. Every instrument will still sound like itself, but by taking on the characteristics of the bagpipes, they can meet with this powerful instrument. The bagpipes cannot merge with Onceim ; Onceim must merge with them. © Genevieve Murphy (ed. hcmf//)

Produced by hcmf// supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia and Diaphonique, the Franco-British-Irish fund for contemporary music in partnership with Sacem, the Friends of the Institut Français, the British Council, the Institut Français, the Centre for National Music, Culture Ireland and the Francis and Mica Salabert Foundation ; also supported by Hinrichsen Foundation and Vaughan Williams Foundation Constellation was commissioned by ONCEIM ; co-produced by Musica and Rainy Days Festival ; and supported by the Nicati de Luz Foundation, Impuls Neue Musik and ADAMI

Together We Feel And Alone We Experience was commissioned by ONCEIM and Gaudeamus ; financially supported by Performing Arts Fund NL ; co-produced by Musica and Rainy Days festival ; and supported by Impuls Neue Musik and ADAMI

Photo : Benjamin Denzler