Since 2019, Soizic Lebrat has been deploying a choreographed musical writing of listening, made possible by the design and production of an innovative binaural capture device centered on the listening point of artists and listeners, and its live three-dimensional broadcast through headphones. In IN(ec)OUT, she superimposed three listening points captured in separate spaces at the same time. In Bach To 3D, she recomposes Johann Sebastian Bach's first suite for solo cello in cubist style, by setting a single listening point in motion. In Tu Vois Je T'Écoute, she welcomes the expressive, mobile listening points of child listeners, in the musical composition of the moment.

Tu Vois Je T'Écoute or expressive listening

Tu Vois Je T'Écoute, is a double form of concert, one acousmatic for young audiences, generating the other, electroacoustic and open to all.
This project will premiere in autumn 2024 at Athénor-CNCM in Saint-Nazaire, as part of the Les Instants Fertiles festival.

In Tu Vois Je T'Écouteyoung children are invited to engage in a listening experience based on their expressive, reactive listening to their environment.

Equipped with wireless, mobile headphones, free to experiment with this unconventional listening posture in their own way, children express their way of listening through the production of sound and movement. Their sound and bodily reactions are expected, welcomed and supported by the two musicians for the sound, and by the dancer-performer for the movement.

This is the binaural recording and three-dimensional listening device developed during the Radiophonium which makes the children's sensitive reactions audible (breathing, laughter, onomatopoeia, words, yawning, cries ....) and allows them to immediately hear the manifestations of their listening.  

By encouraging this choreographic and sonic mise en abyme of reactive listening, the musicians gradually enter into a dialogical exchange with the children, with the listening of one feeding that of the other, co-constructing together simultaneous and reciprocal responses to the following question: can you hear me listening to you?

The music is made live on stage, out of sight of the children listening. This is a strong dramaturgical choice to create in them the desire to try to understand what they hear, a desire that drives their spontaneous expressive listening in the moment of the concert.

It's an acousmatic concert with two voices: Soizic Lebrat's cello andAude Rabillon's pre-recorded sounds, gradually blending with a third voice, that of the children, captured in the moment by dancer-performer Alice Duchesne, equipped with miniature microphones in her ears.

Also hidden from the children's view, Anne-Laure Lejosne mixes these three sound sources, captured and played live, and broadcasts them through the children's headphones.

Tu Vois Je T'Ecoute - Teaser - 2023 from SL on Vimeo.

This acousmatic concert is also conceived as a live recording, a sound capture of a rich and lively musical world, where listeners' reactions are heard and listened to.
Each recording is unique and reinvented in the moment of the concert on acousmonium, performed live, spatialized, for everyone, adults and children alike.

True electroacoustic pieces lasting around twenty minutes, they reveal the creative force of the moment and give access to what is undoubtedly the most precious thing about children: the creative joy of the ungovernable.

Upstream, between 2019 and 2023, the musicians collected their sound and visual materials through a series of residencies(Fabrique Chantenay-Bellevue and la libre usine/le lieu unique in Nantes, Le Logellou in Penvenan, DOC near Caen, among others...).
And since September 2023, they have been working on the 4th phase of the residency, supported and co-produced by Athénor-CNCM, leading up to the 2024 premiere at the Instants Fertiles festival in Saint-Nazaire.

Concept / artistic direction: Soizic Lebrat

Acousmatic concert with headphones for young audiences
Tu Vois Je T'Écoute performers : Alice Duchesne, Aude Rabillon, Anne-Laure Lejosne, Soizic Lebrat,
Video capture : Alice Gautier
With the help of Sara Lebreton - lighting & Jean-Pierre Lebrat - construction of the acoustic hut
Duration: 30 mn | Gauge: group of 15 to 20 children | Age range: 4 to 7 years old

Concert on acousmonium for all audiences
Performers: Soizic Lebrat, Aude Rabillon, Anne-Laure Lejosne
Duration: approx. 20 min.

Production Ultrasonore
Coproduction Athénor - CNCM (2024)
Model and creation support Maison de la Musique Contemporaine, city of Nantes, Loire atlantique department, Pays de la Loire region, DRAC Pays de La Loire

Photos © Alexandre de la Foye