microcosms
decemberdec 6
© Christophe Urbain ©
© Raphaëlle Mueller ©
Saturday december 6
20h
music for percussion 1 & 2 (2016; 2020)
Alexandre Babel, Amélie Grould, Stéphane Garin – percussion
music for strings (2024) – French premiere
Ensemble Modern
This concert is co-presented by the Philharmonie de Paris and the Festival d’Automne à Paris.
With the support of
A world-renowned sound and visual artist, Ryoji Ikeda combines performance art, video installations and electronic music. Since the 2000s, he has also been composing for acoustic instruments. This first concert presents two works, each made up of several pieces, and gives us the opportunity to discover a universe of his in which electricity has been cast aside.
Reducing the divide with the visual arts - black and white, colours, images or movements - Ryoji Ikeda reinterprets the principles of musical writing via elusive, even chaotic minimalist architectures. In duo, trio or quartet formats, and using the performer's own body as percussion, as well a selection of metallic instruments and heterogeneous, incongruous objects of all kinds, the miniatures within music for percussion testify to a pared-down approach to artistic creation. They magnify the tension between sparse visuals and a sound material characterised by rich rhythmic interlacing. Deft patterns, inescapable processes and subtle clockwork mechanisms unfold on a geometric scene. With its different symmetries, in duet or nonet, the same applies to music for strings, in which two musicians read, one backwards and the other in the right direction, a score placed on a long, narrow table. They walk and cross paths in the middle of the stage. Nine performers then position themselves in a single line, highlighting each of their movements.
See also
In the same place