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One of the only festivals to have maintained its programme last year, Futura 2021, dedicated to sound creation, remains on course and continues to prepare for the future in the richness and diversity of its proposals.
A call for works was launched for this 29th edition of the electroacoustic music festival , which its director Vincent Laubeuf envisaged from the angle of lightness: " between carelessness and agility, between inattention and grace, frivolity and imprudence, casualness and joyfulness...", he notes before the programming. The theme is a bit provocative in these heavy and troubled times, and it is enough to boost the imagination of composers and even renew their way of doing things. Some stuck to it, others went off on a tangent.
In the end, no less than thirty composers answered the call, thirty creations heard on the Motus acousmonium (the loudspeaker orchestra) and spread out over the three days of the festival - no "sleepless night" again this year but it will be back on the bill - mixing young talents and confirmed artists, works from the repertoire and innovative practice.
Such is the case with this initiative, rare enough to merit attention, of eight young acousmates (four girls and four boys) brought together within the Acousmaki collective - a word that attests to the diversity of each person's origins - with a view to a joint project, of which we hear the first production, Suite. The approach is risky - the historic experience of the collective concert at the GRM in 1962 never had a following! The sixteen-minute piece, performed by Nathanaëlle Raboisson, traverses as many different soundscapes as there are personalities, but it is a guarantee of fluidity and unity. They have all attended the interpretation course that Futura organises each year before the festival and are virtuosos at mastering the potentiometers of the console. The two prize-winners (excellence level), Ophélie Dorgans (see interview) and Julia Cauley, who were invited to project the music of Michel Chion(Credo Mambo) and Christine Groult(L'heure alors s'incline), gave a brilliant performance. The collective, more united than ever, is already working on a new project...
Michèle Tosi : Ophélie, you are the initiator of the Acousmaki collective. Can you tell us more about this project?
Ophélie Dorgans: We met at the performance workshop organised by Futura just before the festival and then met again in the following years, as the group runs for two or three years, and we became friends. The idea of forming a group gradually took shape. Generally speaking, I am looking for collaborative work, which generates exchanges and sharing. I know that it is sometimes difficult for some people to accept to share their ideas or even their sounds. But I like to defy difficulties! I would like to discuss the subject in greater depth with the group during our next residency in Ariège.
MT: Four boys and four girls: strict parity! Statistically, there are more female composers in the sound arts than in written music. What is your feeling on this?
OD: Indeed, I realise that a lot of women come from the performing arts where they put themselves on stage and apprehend the sound material as a sculpture. I have done a lot of sound installations myself where I can work on my textures and the dimension of space which fascinates me. You feel free to carry out your project and let your imagination run wild. It is undoubtedly this aspect of things that determines us in this way.
Another collaboration, this time with two heads and still in creation, La lumière était tombée malade by Paul Ramage and Alvise Sinivia is an immersive piece with a long and smooth time that explores space and its abyssal depths. On the creation side, Tombeau d'un Physicien Nucléaire (alias Henrico Ferni) by the young Lucien Basdevant (still in training) is a superbly conducted and finely articulated piece playing on the dialogue/passage between recorded instrumental sounds and the abstraction of the electroacoustic material.
In the same concert, the creations of two members of the Acousmaki collective, Anne Foucher's Filiation and Geoffroy Montel's L'inattendu, also hold our full attention. Not forgetting the festival's regulars who enrich the electroacoustic repertoire each year with a new work: Those of Frédéric Kahn, with an openly rebellious title, Métastable, a dialogue on gravity, of Philippe Leguerinel, Mariposa, which makes colours dance and matter twirl (with lightness), of Tomonari Higaki(Prélude acousmatique) and Eric Broitmann, Used, a piece which plays on the notion of gap and carries a heterogeneous material resulting from the composer's "rusches" (discarded sound samples).
Our female models
They belong to a generation that has most often had to defy the macho tendencies of recent decades in order to impose their work and carry out their projects. More numerous than in the field of written music, these female electroacoustic composers, often pedagogues, are models for today's young creators.
Contretemps by Agnès Poisson is an autobiographical composition recounting an unprecedented sound experience, that of the sounds heard under anaesthesia by the composer after a particularly painful surgical operation. They form the basic material of this new work, which is as engaging as it is full of unexpected elements. By Laurence Bouckaert, A man in his world was commissioned by the Motus company with the support of the SACEM, a flagship work of this edition that will have left its mark on the ears as well as on the minds by the scope of its project (certainly far from lightness) and the care taken in its realisation, through the richness of the elaborate textures and the depth of the narrative. The text heard, extracted from Philippe Baudoin's "Machines nécrologiques", is intermittently included in the superbly conducted sound flow. Also on the bill are Argentina's Elsa Justel (Déjà vu), Emilie Mousset(Ritournelle #1 La légèreté) and Marcelle Deschenes(Le Bruit des ailes), a pioneer of the Canadian school.
Portraits of composers
They give rise to two monographic concerts in the evening: firstly, that of Jean-Baptiste Favory (1967), composer, keyboardist and improviser whose Futura is celebrating thirty years of creation. This retrospective is divided into eleven tracks (some of which were heard in premiere form, such as WavingLights, Solipsism, Ciels), covering the various territories of sound explored by Favory, between musique concrète(Bruit mauve ), radio pieces(Zona del silencio), allegiance to Pop and experimental music, in an aesthetic movement that aims to be as free and open as possible. Several pieces refer to the composer's rich discography. Thus db, Les 7 vies de david bowie (CD ACEL Le passager), linking seven sequences corresponding to the seven decades of the glam rock star: a sensitive tribute, using Bowie's voice alone, which takes us into the singer's intimate sphere. Olivier Lamarche is at the helm to give this often immersive music its singular vibrancy and its spatial scope
The festival ends in style with Érosphère (the title is borrowed from Max Ernst), a visionary masterpiece (unabridged version from 1980) by François Bayle (1932), one of the pioneers of acousmatic art. Jonathan Prager is at the console of the Motus acoumonium, admitting, despite his long practice as a performer, that he has never played the work in its entirety: an hour and forty minutes of music that brings together three pieces often performed separately, La Fin du bruit, Tremblement de terre très doux and Toupie dans le ciel, preceded by three preludes, Éros bleu, Éros rouge and Éros noir : The three preludes, Éros bleu, Éros rouge and Éros noir, are preceded by the words "imminent take-off for the acousmatic seventh heaven", as the performer warns during the presentation of this world-work embracing the totality of sound. At the projection console, Jonathan Prager sculpts the sound under his ever-moving fingers to give it its flesh and volume, its reliefs and its volubility in the air: a 3D listening experience - Toupie dans le ciel literally makes us glide - and one of the most beautiful sound experiences of this edition.
Vincent Laubeuf and the entire Futura team are already mobilising for the festival's 30th anniversary (anniversary brochure, installations, white cards, leading figures in music on media, etc.), an event that should take on a particularly dazzling festive twist in 2022: the date is set!
Michèle Tosi
