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Performer, composer, improviser... the harpist Hélène Breschand 's approach is most often a collaborative one, uniting sound, gesture and vibration in a resolutely committed approach to the world. She tells us about the stages of her development, the encounters that have marked her career and the ethics that govern her life as a musician.
Like Joëlle Léandre and her double bass, and Kasper T. Toeplitz and his bass, one could say that you too form a couple with your harp. When did this 'union' start and how would you define it?
For me, I would speak of a relationship of love and lovelessness, of intimacy and limits; I am always with this same instrument, I know its limits and regret them; at the same time I can play it with my eyes closed with a certain ease; but it remains cumbersome and sometimes even "heavy"... that is why I try all sorts of other instruments: the electric harp, the very small bardic harp (the one of the bard) with twenty-two strings; I went on a boat trip with it; I can carry it like a backpack and play it outside or in a more intimate setting, like playing the guitar by the fire; with it, I can play and sing; I can also electrify it and obtain with the voice and the effects pedals a meta-instrument In spite of everything, I want to be a musician before being a harpist.
How long have you been a harpist?
I wanted to play the harp from the start, from the age of three. I love the sound of the instrument; it confuses me, it moves me: the contact of the finger with the string, the way it is held in the arms, this physical and greedy relationship with the instrument; the feet busy making the semitones, the two hands that can play ten notes at the same time, the voice that is free, it's very exciting; it's also dangerous! Playing too much! I also sometimes dance the tango with my harp, lay it down despite its weight... I act according to the situation, in the momentum of the performance.
You talk about "the adventure of the stage". What does that mean to you?
I need a challenge; the stage is a place of challenge; that's why I find it very difficult to repeat the same programme from one concert to the next; I always change something. The adventure of the stage is for me the place of an experience of the order of transcendence because one seeks, thanks to the public, thanks to the unique context of the performance, to be in the core of one's being, in a truth or even a transparency. I like to feel connected to others and to the world, to enter into a sort of vibration, in the position of the shaman and the search for the Duende (in flamenco as in bullfighting, the Duende is a "magical" moment); and I have the impression that I am always starting.
The adventure of the stage is also linked to what I play, to the search for something that I have never done or that I don't know how to do and that allows me to live a new experience each time. I need to feel in motion. I couldn't be satisfied with repeating the same programme. This also comes from the fact that I am in the process of creation, led to discover new writing; but I can understand that one wants to play Bach throughout one's life; it's another path even if there can be, in the long run, a transcendence in repeating the same thing.
You are a performer and composer. How do these three activities fit into your life as a musician?
It's funny that you should ask me this question today; I was asking myself this question a few weeks ago; because I write, I draw, I perform and I compose; I don't want to answer that I'm a performer, a composer, an improviser, an author and a scenographer, that's ridiculous; I was just thinking of "trice" and "sienne" or "compositienne"... or simply artist, even if the word has become a bit pompous. I am primarily a musician (not an actor) but I need to explore dance through my body, to compose to better understand how I play and I need to interpret to be able to compose. When I say musician, it integrates composition, interpretation and improvisation and it goes from one to the other, all that completes itself, in the ebb and flow; it's all permeable; I draw inspiration from one and the other. These are things that many artists experience. In this respect, I feel close to Erik Satie, John Cage, Joseph Beuys of Fluxus, Christian Marclay. You don't ask yourself what they are; they just follow the path of their creation.
Collaborations with other musicians and artists are very important in your work. Are you, as some people like to call you, a "collaborative artist"?
That's a nice word indeed; you're never alone on stage; the show is a collaboration, with the technicians in particular, a whole range of things that make you there; you're connected to each other. For me, who performs a lot as a solo artist, it's very important to carry the project of others; it allows us to rub shoulders with each other; to learn, to be humble enough to penetrate the universe of others, to learn to work as a team; to manage emotions, emotions, to know how to work as a team, like when we sail. There are very collaborative projects like the ones I do with Wilfried Wendling, which go far beyond the duo: mixing worlds, weaving something together. I'm into deeper and deeper weaving; I need meaning and powerful things. I don't do leisure and I'm becoming clearer about that. That's why I have long collaborations during which things can stretch and stretch again; you dig into this evolution and you evaluate your own path; I find it very interesting to have lasting links: like those I have with Wilfried Wendling, we'll come back to that, but also Cécile Mont-Raynaud, Jean-François Pauvros, Franck Vigroux, Elliott Sharp, with whom I exchange a lot. My parents were painters and had painter friends who came to the house; I remember big discussions about the choice of a colour, a brushstroke and I loved their very technical exchanges; that's what I like with musician friends.That's what I like with musician friends; talking about a phrasing, exchanging on shows we've seen, a sound we like, what makes us vibrate; it's very varied, it can seem very technical, but it allows us to deepen our practice, to go further when we meet on stage.
Pandora, Hélène Breschand, music, Charline Corcessin, dance - 2019.
How did you meet Éliane Radigue?
We met without any expectations of each other. I was lending my harp and my flat to Rhodri Davies, one of the first instrumentalists she wrote for. But when he came to work with Éliane, I was away, in concert or travelling. And one day, finally, I was present and I met Eliane; I didn't dare ask her to write a piece for me; she had already written a harp solo for Rhodri; it was she herself who proposed it to me, it was to be in 2015; the piece was created two years later, that's the maturation time she requires before giving the green light for the stage; she is strict about that but doesn't put any pressure, things have to mature. The relationship was built from there but I would say it was love at first sight as far as our relationship is concerned. We laugh a lot with Eliane; I'm a very 'will-o'-the-wisp' person compared to her, who is very calm; she gave me confidence and guided me in what she wanted to hear.
What kind of collaboration did you have with her?
I almost feel like talking about taming each other; she is someone with whom it is always pleasant to talk. She is very demanding and can quickly spot if the performer is in the ego, if he is trying too hard; her music is very tiring physically; it requires a total abandonment of oneself; an asceticism. You have to let it resonate, let it vibrate through the instrument, the space and not want anything more. Let the music be what it is. That's what I was looking for. The demands it makes on me are very pleasing.
Can you tell us about Occam Ocean for harp?
It'sOccam XVI ; Occam Ocean is a big cycle that will probably never end. There are duets and trios, with permutations between the musicians; I have a duet with Louis-Michel Marion on double bass; a trio with him and the clarinettist Carol Robinson and I have a duet with Carol. She herself has a duet with Louis-Michel; and we each have a solo; so Éliane has connected us all. Today, it is more difficult for me to play the solo without the whole cycle (even if I have a Radigue-Ferrari programme with only the solo); however, playing the solo within the cycle of Eliane's works allows the music to evolve and change; it is a lesson in life; you sink into a universe of links and roots; it is a mystical experience that is renewed each time, a unique experience; as if the instrument did not always sound the same. The physical state counts a lot and so does the room, the context. With each performance, you enter a new layer of depth, like a diver who descends lower and lower.
There seems to be, in the experience you describe, a "beyond sound" as Michael Levinas says.
Yes, that's it: one could say that there is a "beyond" sound and, at the same time, an "inside" vibration. Our meeting was not by chance; I believe that Éliane sensed something in me that needed to be revealed; I had already experienced this with Luc Ferrari and some other collaborators; what interests me in music is the vibration of light that penetrates the eyes and the vibration of sound that crosses the body: to feel that everything is vibration. It's not an aesthetic, it's a search that goes beyond music; the need to connect with something that is greater than ourselves.
Do you have any new projects with Éliane Radigue?
With Éliane, nothing is finished; she is a very fluid person; all of a sudden she hears something and it comes true. She wants to write a second trio with Louis-Michel, Carol Robinson and myself and I have a duet with Rodry Davies planned; I think the proposals remain open.
Have you built up a repertoire of pieces that you can play again or do you prefer to renew the adventure of interpretation each time?
I do like to vary my programmes during my concerts. I always find out about the history and the setting in which I am invited, what the history of the place or the city is, and I make the programme according to that; I need to connect with reality and I don't like to pretend that the outside world doesn't exist when I play, especially when I'm playing solo; it creates a kind of anchorage with the people who are listening to me. I remember this concert coinciding with the first day of the Arab Spring, which I wanted to celebrate with the audience. I also like to dedicate my concerts, for example, to those women in Poland who were fighting for the right to abortion; my programmes are always the fruit of a desire, mine or that of the programmers.
As for the repertoire, depending on the course of life, desires change: today, I play a lot of Éliane Radigue and Luc Ferrari, with the pleasure of the acoustic. I have played a lot of Sylvain Kassap, musical theatre... other directions are opening up with the piece that Kasper T. Toeplitz wrote for me and my participation in the IRE ensemble. With Toeplitz and Vigroux, I am moving more towards electronics. There are certain pieces, I'm thinking of Berio's Sequenza or those of Tôn-Tât Thiêt, that I try to keep under my fingers and others that I let go of.
I now favour longer pieces that offer the listener an immersive listening experience; I conceive of my concerts as performances without applause where I link the pieces together to install the audience in the listening experience and offer them a journey. I don't play the same thing as I did twenty years ago; perhaps thanks to Eliane who took me to other lands.
What venues do you like to play in?
I try to avoid conventional concert halls. I like to be in a non-frontal relationship and to break the active/passive relationship between the performer and the audience; I invite the audience to be active; they can be seated comfortably but not necessarily facing me, waiting for something to happen; it is this relationship with the audience that we are constantly reexamining with Wilfried Wendling and I believe that the audience wants this. In my last creation Pandora I had a black box built where people enter two by two; we play for them, they walk in the dark, it's a bit worrying, like theatre, with other listening situations.
You have created a new show Imaginarium with Wilfried Wendling in which literary texts, images, composition, improvisation and electronics converge. What guided this two-headed development?
Immaginarium is the story of our collaboration, which goes back over twenty years. It all began with a piece that Wilfried Wendling wrote for me, Alchemy, regard en abyme. As a complement to the programme, I suggested that we improvise together, me on the harp, him at his computer; he was not yet used to improvising. That was the beginning of this long partnership. We both have the same questions, looking for a total show: theatre, scenography, lights that have become images and sound, since we are musicians. The immersive show is very widespread today, but it has occupied us for a very long time. Imaginarium reinvents itself at each performance, adapting to the place, to the here and now, with this share of risk that stimulates us and the love of play, humour, derision and fun in which we find ourselves. Wilfried comes from the theatre and I myself have hesitated a lot between directing and music: Imaginarium is a great space for invention.
Why did you choose the texts of Étienne Klein?
Wilfried and I listened to and read a lot of his texts, and we took some of his lectures. We wanted him to be on stage but this proved impossible. So we choreographed his speeches, worked on his body language, learnt some of his texts by heart; we became almost avatars ofEtienne Klein, on the borders of the real and the imaginary, of misappropriation and mise en abîme, in the manner of Marc-Antoine Mathieu's universe
What areas have you not yet tackled that tempt you today?
I want to integrate the body into the instrumental gesture, a way of deepening the time and space of the performance.
I have also just finished what I call "an animated score", an animated drawing-poem in the form of a film that will be the subject of an installation... see you next September.
Interview by Michèle Tosi
