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The Strasbourg-based ensemble takes a keen interest in experimental lutherie. The king of Alsatian instruments inspired the unusual luthier who works with them: Léo Maurel.
HANATSU miroir celebrated its tenth year of existence, discovery and creation in 2020. Created by flutist Ayako Okubo and percussionist Olivier Maurel in 2010, the ensemble has since built up a singular, curious and eclectic repertoire. Primarily focused on creation, transmission, touring and research into hybrid lutheries, the ensemble is currently interested in the crossroads of different musical styles.
Presentation of the EXOrgue cycle and Organous with percussionist Olivier Maurel, artistic director of HANATSUmiroir and brother of Léo.
What is Organous?
The Orguanous is the prototype of a new kind of organ, designed by Léo Maurel. Léo realized that organ building, with its 2,000-year history, is a huge playground for organ builders and luthiers! The Organous has the particularity of being transportable and multimodular: you can play it outside a church and discover other acoustics. In this way, it is better adapted to today's ways of playing music. It's made up of eight modules, so you can place the instrumentalists or listeners in the middle, in front or behind, as you wish... The pipes can be placed anywhere on a stage or in a hall. The instrument is disconnected from its console, and controlled by a computer in the same way as a synthesizer, meaning that several musicians can play the Orguanous simultaneously. It's an instrument that's set to evolve: improvements are planned to take it even further in the practice of electronic music!
Organous is the epicenter of the EXOrgue project.
How do you go about developing a repertoire for this instrument?
This is the challenge of the EXOrgue cycle, imagined by the HANATSUmiroir ensemble. For this new instrument to live, it needs a repertoire. EXOrgue is a cycle of musical workshops we call laboratories, where we bring together musicians from similar ensembles, with a taste for improvisation and sound experimentation: musicians from the Links ensemble and the Greek ensemble ARTÉfacts... The idea is for several composers to join us for each section. Laurent Durupt, from the Links ensemble, began by creating an initial composition using this novel instrument. The aim of the EXOrgue cycle is clearly to develop a repertoire for ensemble and Organous.
The first session of the EXOrgue cycle took place in December 2019, and the official creation of the piece was due to take place last November, in Strasbourg. We're waiting for a little visibility in the season to find a new date... We were also due to perform in Athens, with the ARTEfacts ensemble, in February, but this has been postponed for a year.
This project echoes our work with ErikM, in which we also explore hybrid lutheries using treated percussion and electro-magnetism.
It was you and bassist Stéphane Clor who took part in Hémisphère Son's first commission...
It's a commission that follows in the footsteps of our work: the writing of a piece on stage, i.e. over the course of sessions in which each musician brings his or her own background, ideas and intuitions, in collaboration with a composer, Elsa Biston and a composer Samir Amarouch to collectively compose a concert work.
Interview by Suzanne Gervais
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