Musique Action #37More than just a catch-up!

Spotlights 30.05.2021

This has never happened since the birth of Musique Action in 1984, at the Centre culturel André Malraux (CCAM) in Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy, and it's happening for the second year running: in May 2021, as in May 2020, the festival is cancelled due to the health crisis.

This abrupt halt is a thunderbolt for an audience keen on new experiences; for dozens of programmed artists who see a fine platform for their most daring proposals close; but also for a CCAM team, the longest-serving as well as the newcomers, deeply committed to a historic festival, in full recomposition since the recent arrival of its new director Olivier Perry, at the end of 2017. We thought it impossible. Only once in its long history had the festival been forced to close its doors, in 2009. At the time, it had been directed by Dominique Répécaud since 2000, one of its initiators, who that same year had obtained the label scène nationale for the CCAM. In a show of solidarity, dozens of artists turned up to play for free during a resistant "Stand by May". There's no stopping Musique Action!

After consulting the team, Olivier Perry and Anne-Gaëlle Samson, deputy director, decided to offer a "catch-up session" in September 2020, and again in September 2021. These two sessions will bring together over one long weekend some of the artists who were scheduled to perform at the May festival, and offer the public a chance to meet up and mark this annual milestone in spite of everything. Everyone on the team agrees that it would be impossible to give up, even if the catch-up only lasted one evening.

Obviously, this September session no longer has the coherence and logic of a year-long program: the festival week is concentrated on just three evenings, and many of the guest artists are no longer free, in the rush of commitments and postponements due to successive confinements and deconfinements. As a result, some of the projects originally planned will find their way into the next edition of Musique Action (Fata morgana by ErikM with ensemble Dedalus), or even in a more distant and hypothetical future(The Stringless Piano by Francisco López and Reinier Van Houdt). But as Olivier Perry points out: " What remains is curiosity! "

This festival, with its long history and commitment to sound creation, carries a considerable emotional charge. People come to the festival as much to discover new things as for the sake of it. More than ever, the festival aims to open up to new ears, break down barriers and dispel any reservations that neophytes might have about the music it promotes. The tightly-packed format and rapid set-up of the September 2020 session enabled us to meet new people and set a completely new pace, far from being uninteresting. The 2021 catch-up session will take place between September 30 and October 3. It's sure to be full of surprises and discoveries.

But that's not all. This year, still stunned by the second cancellation, and rejecting the idea of a streaming festival, the CCAM team decided in a collegial discussion to commission a film, for which I was responsible (writing and interviews) alongside director Vincent Tournaud. We shot the film during a residency at the CCAM in April, with all the energy of urgency, just three weeks before the start of the festival, when it was due to be released. In a race against time, Vincent Tournaud completed the editing in extremis over the following two weeks. All hands on deck, administrative, technical and artistic. We discuss and evaluate the proposed images right up to the last minute.

TEASER INEXTINGUIBLE from Vincent Tournaud on Vimeo.

This documentary, Inextinguishablegives a voice to eight artists whom I interview about their thirst to create again and again, despite all the hardships they've been through, and despite the absence of an audience they haven't been able to meet for a year. Our brief was precise: not to present a simple catalog of the projects of the artists interviewed, to open up this music to new audiences via internet distribution, and to deal with the question of musical creation in times of crisis. For this fascinating undertaking, we are surrounded and assisted by a highly motivated team, and the artists, whether in residence or contacted by internet, lend themselves to the game with sincerity and emotion. It does us all a world of good to come out of our terrible isolation and finally be able to express and share it. On the first day of filming, a superb accordion performance byÉmilie Škrijelj enchanted the empty corridors of the CCAM. Although it was given for the very small lucky team recording this precious testimony, its simplicity symbolizes the quintessence of musical communication in its primary emotion: one musician and four pairs of ears to listen to her. We'd almost forgotten this feeling... It brings tears to my eyes.

Pianist and performer Claudine Simon and bassist and electroacoustician Floy Krouchi are among the artists interviewed in the film. Both work with hybrid objects, instruments augmented by electronic devices, one of the major trends in music today. In Pianomachinedevices installed at the heart of the piano double, support or compete with Claudine Simon. The FK Bass by Floy Krouchi features some forty controllers enabling all kinds of new access to her instrument.

These two musicians are among the artists the public will be able to listen to during the fall 2021 catch-up session.

Guillaume Kosmicki

These interviews were conducted as part of the cancelled edition of Musique Action 2021.

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