Eklekto is a contemporary percussion collective founded in 1974 in Geneva. Created under the visionary impulse of Swiss percussionist Pierre Metral, the group was first called CIP (International Percussion Centre), and became an important contemporary percussion centre, building up collaborations with other percussion organizations like Kroumata, Amadinda, Les Percussions de Strasbourg among others. Over the years, the collective has worked with prestigious artistic directors: Steven Schick, William Blank, Jacques Ménétrey, Jean Geoffroy. Since 2011 the collective has taken the name Eklekto and has a flexible lineup of up to 20 percussionists. Over the years, Eklekto has gathered a collection of percussion instruments of nearly 1000 pieces. The group focuses on collaborating with living composers and artists in order to create
and organize concerts, multimedia projects and artistic events that question the listener's expectations towards new musical forms. Eklekto has premiered works of composers Yoshihisa Taira, John Luther Adams, Pierre Jodlowski, Roland Dahinden, Billy Martin and performed with guest musicians Etienne Jaumet, Fritz Hauser, Arturo Tamayo, Stefan Asbury, amongst many others. In its recent projects, Eklekto questions the conventional concert form with projects such as the electroacoustic «Drumming by numbers» (Bâtie festival de Genève, 2012), the trilogy «Words & Percussion» (Théâtre du Galpon, Geneva, 2014-2016), a contemporary Gamelan project (Archipel Festival, 2015) or the three hours marathon «Discount Minimal» from composer Thomas Meadowcroft and visual artist Florian Bach (Berlin, 2017). Since 2013, Swiss percussionist Alexandre Babel is Eklekto's artistic director.
