Encyclopédie de la parole Suite nº3 ‘Europe'

Joris Lacoste
Pierre-Yves Macé

[Theater / Music]

In this latest addition to the Suites chorales, Joris Lacoste and the artists behind the Encyclopédie de la parole will be continuing their explorations into the realms of the real through the prism of everyday language. In collaboration with the composer Pierre-Yves Macé, they will be presenting us with freshly garnered, violent words (accompanied by the piano) from across the whole of Europe. Echoes, perhaps, of the current sorry state of affairs...
Two years ago, Suite n°2 gave us a concerto of words with the power to act upon the world. This time around, what the Encyclopédie de la parole is interested in is how words affect us - negatively. By bringing to our ears viewpoints that we would “prefer not to hear”, Suite nº3 ‘Europe' takes us on a journey into the paradoxical. Backed up by its closest ally, music, in the form of two opera singers, harsh words gathered up from across the whole of the European Union are rendered up in all their orality. Every melodic, rhythmic, temporal and tonal nuance is given a voice. In Suite n°3, however, they will be accompanied on stage by a piano in order to highlight or emphasize their inflections. This creates the possibility of counterpoint - competition even - with each other, thereby enabling us to hear them in unexpected ways. We find ourselves listening to them as we might listen to a series of lieder, melodies, operatic recitatives, pop songs, or the sounds of French popular music. For Joris Lacoste and Pierre-Yves Macé, joint authors of the musical score, such a mechanism provides the necessary distance and strand of humour for us to hear, and exorcise, these “foul tongues”.