As Stephan Crasneanscki recounts in his sound portrait on Hémisphère son, crickets chirp to exhaustion and succumb to their love songs, for while they chirp for mating, they are so intoxicated by their own sounds that they forget to eat and eventually die of exhaustion at the end of summer. When sound and love meet! This is the summer playlist.

Suzanne Gervais' playlist

Crystalline, for ensemble by Olivia Bettina Davis (2017)
Born in 1988, Olivia Bettina Davis belongs to the generation of Australian composers heir to the symphonic research of Peggy Glanville-Hicks, who spent her life (1912-1990) searching for a third way, between serialism and neoclassicism, a third way which, for her, lay in greater attention to popular music: modality, the importance of rhythm, cycles. Based in Perth, Olivia Davis focuses her instrumental work on texture, mood and flow.

Song for Octave by Brice Dessner Bertrand Chamayou (2019)We're clearly in the minimalist vein with this little nocturnal piece for piano by American composer Brice Dessner. I loved its simplicity, its haunting dimension, which is what I'm looking for in music these days.

My Blue Sky by Joji Yuasa (1975)
A virtuoso violin page full of variations by the self-taught Japanese composer Joji Huasa, a member of the experimental Jikken Kobo laboratory with his compatriot Toru Takemitsu from 1951 onwards. I love this pared-down piece: one violin, that's all, and bold. A monologue, sometimes calm, sometimes delirious.

David Sanson's playlist

Longoz, Ann O'aro (Cobalt)
Last March, on the stage of Antre-Peaux in Bourges, Ann O'aro rounded off her French tour with a concert of rare intensity: the presence of this singer, whose magnetic, timeless voice evokes those of the greats, is uncommon. The trombone of Teddy Doris and the percussion of Bino Waro (son of Danyel) offer a singular setting and sparkle to these songs, which are no less singular, marrying Creole and French with a rare, wild poetry - as evidenced by Longoz, released in 2020.

V/A : Prends le temps d'écouter (CD Born Bad/Radio Minus, 2023)
A master in the art of unearthing pop-culture repertoires, the Born Bad label has teamed up with Radio Minus to launch the "Lance-pierre" collection, dedicated to musical projects recorded specifically for or by children. This new opus gathers recordings of "free expression music" made between 1962 and 1982 in Freinet classes. The result, a blend of experimentation on tape, wild improvisations, poetic fulgurances and folk-songs in a state of grace, is as fascinating as it is moving, reminding us that freedom is the primary condition of music.

Open Spaces by Garth Knox and the Ragazze Quartet: (CD Channel Classics, 2023)
Garth Knox's career has been a fascinating one, starting out with theEnsemble Intercontemporain and the Arditti Quartet, and blazing a highly personal trail on viola and viola d'amore, at the confluence of the traditional music of his native Britain, early music and contemporary writing. After several CDs on the ECM label, this new release brings together his compositions for string quartet and viola. The Amstellodammers of the Ragazze Quartet are the ideal interpreters of this delicate music, which never forgets to be playful - as evidenced by the Quartet for one that closes the disc, composed during confinement, in which Garth Knox plays a string quartet all to himself!

The playlist of Michèle Tosi

Remembering clouds by Sofia Avramidou (2022)
Text in French by Laure Gauthier performed byensemble Ictus with Theresa Dlouhy, soprano - Eva Reiter, viola da gamba - Tom Pauwels, electric guitar
Greek-born composer and singer Sofia Avramidou (b. 1988) often uses the voice in her scores. Remembering clouds for soprano, viola da gamba and electric guitar evokes the fate of Kaspar Hauser, the teenager who has been called "the orphan of Europe", locked up all his childhood and arriving at the gates of Nuremberg one day in May 1828, barely able to speak, exhausted, staggering, gesticulating and grunting incomprehensibly...

Concerto for violin and ensemble by György Ligeti (1990)
At the request of Saschko Gavriloff, Ligeti (1923-2006) wrote a first version of his three-movement Violin Concerto in 1990, adding two more movements in 1992. The ensemble features special wind instruments, such as the ocarina and the slide flute, which emit imprecise pitches, as Ligeti wished to move away from the Western temperate system. The writing of the concerto is also influenced by the complex polymetry of African tribal music, which maintains a constant irregularity of pulse. 

La Horde for ensemble by Hugues Dufourt (2022)
Hugues Dufourt (b. 1943) coined the term "spectral" to describe the 1970s protest movement that considered sound phenomena in all their applications, in terms of writing, composition and perception. After Tiepolo, Blake, Poussin, Rembrand, Courbet, Goya, Pollock, etc., the composer turns to Max Ernstand his Horde in this new piece. "La Horde shows the irruption of haggard, bristling, vehement silhouettes, ready to take action ", says the composer: so many invitations to "the ear that looks" and the transmutation of visual sensations into a world of sound.
To be heard on France Musique, in the opening concert of the Présences 2022 festival, from 68' to 90'.