Craig Shepard On Foot: Aubervilliers
Trumpet City: Aubervilliers

In these two projects, the American composer Craig Shepard develops a sensory-led approach to the city. On Foot: Aubervilliers invites participants to take a silent walk along a pre-defined route whilst listening out for new ways of apprehending their environment on the way. The second project, Trumpet City: Aubervilliers brings together music and street in harmony.

After conducting Silent Walks in Brooklyn, Boston and Olomouč (Czech Republic), Craig Shepard will be making his début in France by inviting Festival spectators to take a stroll their immediate environment, their minds and ears attentive to new ways of listening to it. The idea is both simple and intriguing: setting off from the Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, the American artist has put together a route lasting several hours for the participants, keeping to their vow of silence, to follow. In the absence of mobile phones or verbal exchanges of any kind, the group moves around the city like a silent bubble, entirely permeable to its surroundings. During a break in the proceedings, participants will be invited to listen to the sound environment by means of a microphone placed in the middle of a circle formed by them. A member of the international collective Wandelweiser, Craig Shepard, the trombonist and composer makes extensive use of field recordings. He incorporates them in his work in his search for a form of music that eases its way between the interstices of the universe, respecting its secret rhythms and silences.
This is the driving force behind the second project presented this autumn, Trumpet City: Aubervilliers. It brings together forty or so trumpeters for a performance lasting roughly an hour, along Avenue de la République. Posted fifty metres from each other and playing at a volume close to that of the traffic, the musicians will be giving passers-by the opportunity to approach their everyday sound environment in a different way.
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On Foot: Aubervilliers
Estimated running time: : from 3h to 12h, depending on the itinerary
Itinerary details Here
Trumpet City: Aubervilliers
Estimated running time : 1h