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At the Conservatoire de Strasbourg, students and ensembles are loud and clear in their defence of creativity.
Daniel D'Adamo, Argentine composer and composition teacher, encourages exchanges and porosity between his students and Strasbourg's many ensembles specializing in contemporary music. They come from Italy, Spain, England and South America to study composition in Strasbourg. Head for the Conservatoire and the Haute école des arts du Rhin - Hear - which share the same buildings in the heart of the city.
How do you view the creative scene on the banks of the Rhine?
The density of initiatives is very impressive. If you take the ratio of population to activity in contemporary music, it's exemplary! The city of Strasbourg is supporting this boom with a dynamic cultural policy. There's a public, a shared interest in creation and contemporary music. Musicians - performers and composers - of the highest calibre have been trained at the Haute école des arts du Rhin for several generations. A number of ensembles specializing in contemporary repertoires have emerged here, such as L'Imaginaire, Hanatsu Miroir,lovemusic... The Percussions de Strasbourg were the pioneers and spearhead of a whole series of ensembles now proudly championing new music. The pool of young composers in my class attracts the attention and ears of all these Strasbourg ensembles. You could say that Strasbourg has a community of interest in the service of creation, a unique ecosystem. Each one digs its own furrow, but there's a real porosity between the ensembles. In contemporary music, the individual career worked for a while, and was even set up as a model, but this model is now obsolete, and we need to think collectively. This is a major reflex in France: we immediately set someone up as a hero, a star, to the detriment of building a community. If there are great figures, they must emerge from a shared activity, a collective activity.
How does your class work with the Strasbourg ensembles?
I have 14 students in my class, ranging in age from 17 to just over 30. As soon as I arrived in 2017, I immediately involved the local ensembles - we mainly work with five of them - in the work of the composition class. They have indispensable know-how that I can explain as a composer, but that I can't bring to the students: I don't play all the instruments, nor all the scores. Every year, two ensembles work with the class, and the schedule rotates. The work culminates in a concert by each ensemble, which plays the students' pieces. If one ensemble is more interested in scenic issues, it joins the scenography class. If another ensemble is more interested in instrumental technique, we'll organize meetings to encourage the transmission of technical skills from the instrument to the performer. It's essential that the ensembles be varied to stimulate different facets of the students' inspiration. Working with performers who specialize in contemporary repertoires makes composition more concrete. When you compose, you write with a performer nearby. The performer has to be involved in the writing process. All the scores we compose in my class are scores that we perform in public.
To be able to work with different ensembles in this way... This is not the case in all conservatories...
This is a great opportunity for students, and all composition classes should be given the chance to make regular exchanges. The CNSMD in Paris is working very hard with theEnsemble Intercontemporain, and we can assume that this will soon be the case in Lyon with the Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain. In addition to working with outside ensembles, we also encourage a great deal of in-house collaboration. At the start of each year, we organize a "speed dating" day with composers and student musicians! It's a great opportunity for friendship and musical collaboration. Young student performers have a passion for contemporary music, and want to take risks during their exams. For a performer, an interest in and commitment to contemporary music rarely comes out of nowhere. It's fundamental.
Despite the health crisis, Daniel D'Adamo has released two CDs: one on Nomadmusic, combining pages by Schubert with a new piece, Sur Vestiges, for cello and string quartet, performed by Noémi Boutin and the Béla Quartet
And the conservatory has other projects on the go!
This autumn, we are opening the first Franco-German doctorate in composition. It is being piloted by four institutions: the Conservatoire, of course, the University of Strasbourg and the Rhine University of the Arts, as well as the University and the famous Musikhochschule in Freiburg, where my colleague Johannes Schollhorn teaches. Barely 100 kilometers separate our two border towns. The course lasts three years. The aim is for students to benefit from the dual nationality of the diploma, with French students spending a few semesters in Germany and vice versa. The doctorate is open to composers who wish to develop a research project in the context of writing a piece. The prerequisite for In France, this is awarded by the two Conservatoires in Paris and Lyon, or by the Haute école des arts du Rhin in Strasbourg. Ircam has its own academy, while Marseille's Gmem is developing its own with Métaboles, the Tana quartet, the Multilatérales ensemble and Salzburg's Mozarteum: Arco *.
I would like to see a new project along these lines in Strasbourg, occupying the space left vacant by Philippe Manoury's composition academy, which no longer exists. Interest in his academies continues to grow, even among the general public!
The second album , The Lips Cycle, for Isabel Soccoja's voice, flute, viola, harp and electronics, is released by ECM Records .
France Musique The Lips cycle at Festival de Musica 2018 : https://www.francemusique.fr/emissions/le-concert-du-soir/lips-cycle-daniel-d-adamo-65337
Interview by Suzanne Gervais
