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The show A l'Improviste on France Musique was born in September 2000, and quickly set up its microphones at the Musique Action festival. Musique Action It was an obvious choice. The first time was in May 2005, during the #22 edition, for the recording of two concerts: the duo of Camel Zekri and Fred Frith, all guitars out, and the Mephista trio made up of Sylvie Courvoisier, Susie Ibarra and Ikue Mori. A look back at the images, and a chat with the current management team of CCAM and Musique Action: Anne-Gaëlle Samson and Olivier Perry.
Seventeen years already! I'd be lying if I said I remember the 22nd edition in detail. However, certain images and impressions have remained vivid: the frenetic pace of the concerts, a form of extreme vitality, of contrasts in all directions, in the programming, in the confrontation between the arts (written and improvised music, dance, text, images, musical theater...) and the performance spaces (village hall, studio, auditorium, gallery, Médiathèque, MJC de Lillebonne...). Never before have I felt such a sense of excitement and vertigo as I do at the CCAM, a ship moored in the waters off Vandoeuvre-lés-Nancy, as I do when I dive headfirst into so many singular universes in the space of just a few hours. For me, a radio producer who came to improvised and contemporary music rather late in life, each Musique Action proposal was almost a first: I discovered and learned a great deal through this festival, and I feel I owe it a huge debt. Dominique Répécaud, and his team welcomed radio with a mixture of distance and generosity. I remember a committed, omnipresent director, running from one concert to the next, always welcoming, often exhausted! Dense days and short nights graced his deep, radio-friendly voice with a few even deeper notes, as I reached for my microphone to hear him talk about the festival.
Musique Action has left me with many powerful images in which sounds, bodies (including that of dancer Marie Cambois), images (numerous fascinating exhibitions, including that of Johnny Lebigot), and spaces (including the superb duet by Sophie Agnel and Ikue Morie in the gallery, and the installation by Hugo Roussel on edition #33: 12 amplified electric guitars, in memoriam D.R.). I've discovered so many artists at Musique Action that it would be pointless to name them all here. Over the years, A l'Improviste has tried to give listeners a palpable sense of the festival's pulse, either through concerts captured on the spot, or through reporting.
In 2014, two mosaic-like programs entitled "Une journée particulière au festival Musique Action" (A special day at the Musique Action festival) brought to life in sound and words and at a steady tempo (the festival-goer's vision), two long evenings of the 30th edition of the festival. For the evening of May 30, the sounds of Sophie Agnel's cordophone, Bruits de couloir by Marc Pichelin, Kristof Guez & Frédéric Le Junter(Cie Ouïe Dire), Filarium by Jérôme Noetinger, Michel Chion & Lionel Marchetti, the quintet of Daunik LazroPhil Minton, Ana Ban (Dominique Répécaud himself) & the duo Kristoff K.Rollduo, the drum duo of Yuko Oshima and Christophe Sorro... And for the next day's program, sounds from a solo by Daunik Lazro, the quintet La Banquise ( Françoise Toullec, Claudia Solal, Louis-Michel Marion, Michel Deltruc, Antoine Arlot), La Bohemia Electronica...nunca duerme by the duo Kristoff K.Roll, Franz Hautzinger's Poet Congress, or the Klang trio of Sophie Agnel, Catherine Jauniaux & Yuko Oshima... The tempo of these two broadcasts obviously "resonated" with Dominique Répécaud, who told me that he had rediscovered the spirit of his festival!
In 2017, the 33rd edition, programmed by Dominique Répécaud, was held without him.
Among the programming ideas dear to his heart was a quintet featuring the two guitarists Camel Zekri and Fred Frith (the famous 2005 duo recorded by A l'Improviste!), with guitarist guitarist Gilles Lavalguitarist Gilles Laval, drummer Ahmad Compaoré and Romain Baudoin on hurdy-gurdy. As you'll recall, the music improvised by the musicians unfurled a heady melody throughout, based on the letters D.R., alias Dominique Répécaud. The idea had occurred to Fred Frith before the concert, in the airport waiting room. Everyone (except newcomer Romain Baudoin) had a strong connection with the festival and Dominique Répécaud. Of course, Musique Action #33 was no ordinary edition! A magazine was passed from hand to hand: a special issue of Revue et Corrigée, entirely devoted to the musician, programmer, producer and intermediary Dominique Répécaud, who died suddenly a few months earlier, in November 2016.
Today, at the helm of this vessel is Olivier Perry, who works four-handed with Anne-Gaëlle Samson, co-director of the CCAM, to program the editions of this festival in full evolution, between continuity (the heritage of over 30 years of festival) and discontinuity, or let's say necessary changes.
For Olivier Perry, "a festival is a form of living organism - so it's logical that there should be cells already in place, and others that are being renewed, and that the path between the two should be made. Today, we're at a moment of decompartmentalization. In the past, aesthetics were conceived in opposition, in very distinct places. Today, we're seeing more and more cross-fertilization between aesthetics, and with Musique Action we hope to move towards greater convergence. Of course, one might fear that, in time, all festivals will resemble each other along these lines, but I think there's still room for improvement! Finally, if you look at the festival's archives and the book of interviews produced by Henri Jules Julien in 2008, you'll see that we have a lot to offer, Musique Action - Défrichage sonorewe can see that this friction between aesthetics has always been present here, with more or less marked phases. In the early years of Musique Action, many styles of music intersected at the CCAM: you could meet musicians of learned music or contemporary written music, jazz, rock in position... Over time, electronic music came more strongly. This eclecticism is part of the festival's DNA, and it's also what makes it so rich. When I discovered Pascal Comelade in 1992 at Musique Action (and especially Pierre Bastien who shared the stage with him, a real revelation), I was discovering very different things at the same time! For the student I was in the early 90s, Musique Action was a kind of well where I could go and find unheard-of, unknown things. I came to Musique Action as a spectator until 2001. Then I had to leave the region, but I continued to listen to this music and discover other festivals, until the day I moved back to Nancy. I applied for the position of director of the CCAM in 2017, because I felt that to direct this venue you had to have an interest in this music, that it was important to take on the legacy of this festival, and that at the same time it could be useful to have knowledge of other sectors of the performing arts, to operate a form of synthesis."
Anne-Gaëlle Samson has been a member of the CCAM and Musique Action teams since 2011. She is therefore well placed to talk about the changes taking place between the two visions of the festival proposed by Dominique Répécaud, and then Olivier Perry. Passionate about dance and theater, she came to creative music organically, thanks to the festival and dance. For her, the interdisciplinary nature of Musique Action has always been an added value of the programming.
" At Musique Action, sound has always been at the heart of the programming, including choreographic projects. I remember some choreographies that we didn't program because they lacked this concern for sound. Dominique had this constant preoccupation, just as he had that of transmission. He passed on a lot to the artists who came here and grew up with the CCAM. I remember that when we received artists in the office, Dominique would always ask them about their relationship with sound. When we came to see him to discuss a show project, we'd usually leave with a number of playlists, things to listen to (he'd say: "listen to this"!), and that shaped the ear of choreographers and theater people. He did it with great generosity. He knew so much music and so many musicians!"
Anne-Gaëlle Samson doesn't see the festival's evolution in terms of continuity/discontinuity, but she does insist on the change of era: " Between the Musique Action of yesteryear and that of today, there are places of continuity, of common love, and also places of openness to other fields, and of questioning. Today, the CCAM probably doesn't have the same relationship with the public and the repertoire. On the festival's long evenings, it's clear that the music performed here attracts an audience that is already familiar with most of it. This wasn't a problem in the last few years of the festival, when Dominique was in charge, but today it's a more pressing question. I'm not saying that Dominique didn't ask himself this question, but it wasn't the main focus of his thinking, or let's say that today we can follow in his footsteps, to go further. It's a question that's on our minds a lot! For us, it's an essential subject, as is the question of the presence of women in programming".
Anne Montaron