The first weekend of Archipel will be dedicated to the friction from which arises the spark of new forms. Narration organizes contact. Words generate friction. The stage is a shrine.

For Aperghis/Cadiot, it is a kind of sweet madness. An obsessive singer keeps thinking about words and notes, is divided into two on screen, and does not know any more if she is to speak or sing (Tourbillons, MCP March 23rd, 10:30 pm).
Yannick Haennel explores the mental spaces of his unconsciousness. There, he finds objects carefully stored, activating doublebassist Nicolas Crosse’s memories and improvisations. His polymorphous instrument turns into an electric guitar or into whale singing (staging by Lorenzo Malaguerra, and ten music creations, MCP March 25th, 02:00 pm).

John Cage needed absolutely no associate to invent an art of mixing. He was a musician, a poet, a painter, a thinker – and a renowned mycologist. Inspired by the numerous talents of the American artist, Wilhem Latchoumia and Pierre Jodlowski have imagined this recital-performance for prepared piano, toy-piano and Baschet-Malbos piano, documentary and vintage radios: a tribute paid by seven compositors creations to the man who would be hundred-years-old today, yet still young (MCP, March 25th, 05:00 pm).

Stating that some instruments are irreconcilable, Bernd Alois Zimmermann wrote an anti-sonata where violoncello prevails over piano. Arne Deforce develops this concept by gathering Schubert and Complexicism (Barrett’s creation), Becket and the teenagers’ cult film director (Not I, realized by Neil Jordan) within a staged concert (MCP, March 24th, 06:00 pm). Irreconcilable – really?

Exploring language as a foreign body, Vincent Barras, Jacques Demierre, Caroline Bergvall and the ‘Encyclopédie de la parole’ Co-operative have designed a show about voice, from lungs to lips, from understandable to strange things, a sound poetry arising from theatrical voice (Grütli, March 25th, 08:00 pm). At last, Jodlowki’s sound and plastic setting will broadcast and mix 56 people memories: it is a long interactive tunnel that can be visited anytime at the Common House. Words, childhood echoes, walks surrounded by sounds that lulled us: the very substance of fiction (from March 23rd to April 1st).

This first weekend will also give the opportunity to pay a tribute to Maurice Ohana, a solar musician, whose re-discovery is an absolute necessity. He was a free man who, like Debussy, listened ‘nothing but the advice of the wind’ as long as it came from the South. The Geneva Chamber Orchestra and the Solistes de Lyon will perform three Ohana’s masterpieces inspired by the Mediterranean Sea (that of Llorca and Alphonse The Wise) as well as Afro-Cuban rites (MCP, March 23rd, 08:00 pm).

After last year exceptional closing concert, we were keen to invite again the Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain, one of the best French contemporary ensembles. They will play Jarrell and premiere two works by Adamek and Sakai, two young compositors among the most outstanding ones of the European stage.