Between Alsace and England.
A new perspective on new music: this is the credo of this young collective of nine musicians, founded in 2017 by Emiliano Gavito and the British clarinettist trained at the Strasbourg Conservatory, Adam Starkie.

Flute, clarinet, violin, cello, guitar, accordion, oboe, percussion and voice. Apart from its atypical line-up, how would you define lovemusic, in three words?

Creation: since 2017, we've been commissioning five new pieces a year. We've had to make financial sacrifices to be able to do that.

Innovation: we wanted to propose an original instrumental line-up to have rarer combinations of instruments and timbres. For example, we did not want to include a piano in the collective.

Visual: we experiment. The first year we worked with two set designers. On stage, we do quite theatrical things, with costumes and movements. The music is always in the foreground, but the visual dimension is important. It's an effective way for the audience to enter these repertoires. And then we talk a lot with the audience between pieces: we tell anecdotes about rehearsals, about working with composers... We're not dressed all in black and frozen behind the music stand!

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How do you choose the composers whose pieces you are going to perform, to whom you are going to commission?

I listen a lot, I spend a lot of time researching online, on composers' Youtube channels, on Soundcloud, which is a mine. Making records is getting rarer and rarer, so it's easier to go directly to what the composer posts on Soundcloud. I recommend it to those who want to make discoveries! Our collaboration with the conservatory and the Haute école des arts du Rhin (Hear) is precious: Daniel d'Adamo immediately set up concerts of young creation and I always go to listen to the pieces of the students. It is very beneficial for an ensemble to see what is being done in the composition classes of conservatories. You can spot the talents of the younger generation. Students in the same class often come from several countries: their influences are diverse and rich.

Would the DNA of lovemusic be different if you weren't based in Strasbourg?

Yes, we are all products - even if I don't like that word - of the conservatory and of our class. Every time the teaching or guest composer changed, it changed the identity of the class. At the Strasbourg Conservatory, we were really immersed in the profession before doing it for real, the emulation is unique! Even if we do concert tours elsewhere in Europe and the world, we want to have a base here. Strasbourg remains a small city, such a profusion is incredible. We give a cycle of five concerts a year, since 2019, at the university library in Strasbourg. Despite this, we have to fight: this is our third season and the other Strasbourg ensembles are several years older. We have to create demand! We give between 15 and 20 concerts a year, we don't have an administrator or a production manager: we do everything ourselves. The first years of an ensemble's life are a trial by fire. We have to prove ourselves for a long time before we can get proper grants.

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You are British. How do you explain that there is so little interference between the British contemporary scene and France?

It's very strange: we are so close geographically, and yet so far apart! During my master's degree in clarinet at the Strasbourg Conservatory, I prepared a project that I called "An Englishman in Strasbourg". The contemporary pieces I played were Scottish and English: they were not known at all in Strasbourg, this music sounded quite exotic. Young British composers are not known in France and vice versa, even if a few names come out from time to time like Philip Venables.

Last year, we toured England with the support of the Franco-British Diaphonic Foundation. But the Brexit makes it even more difficult to exchange... The visas you need to go and play are very expensive and now very complicated to get. The logistics are already discouraging! You also have to understand that the artistic system is totally different from France: in the UK, composers are often professors in a university, like in the US. There are many more teaching positions available and they are more valued.

See you soon in lovemusic in concert in Strasbourg:

• portrait of Zad Moultaka at the ONR's Salle Ponelle on June 6
• pedagogical project with the students of Daniel d'Adamo, HEAR and André Serre-Milan on June 26th in Reims

Interview by Suzanne Gervais