Le chant de la terre: creation and regional project at Bosc Hyons (76)

THE PROJECT
LES CHEMINS DE TRAVERSES
DE CAELIS ENSEMBLE
COMMUNAUTÉ DE COMMUNES DES 4 RIVIÈRES

In 2024-2025, the De Caelis ensemble will be welcomed in residence by the Les chemins de traverse association, in its ecolieu at Bosc-Hyons
to carry out cultural and creative activities for the people of the Pays de Bray.
By combining two media and two skills – song and sculpture – this project combines clay and music through song, breath and wind, to pay tribute to nature and the animal world. It is also based on the landscape and geological identity of the Pays de Bray, a region rich in local clays whose qualities are famous and whose work, pottery and industrial ceramics, has shaped the region.
The artistic thread running through this collaboration is that of medieval and contemporary bestiary, linking the musical universe of the De Caelis ensemble, the manufacture of zoomorphic sound objects in clay and the Pays de Bray, where clay has been worked for over 1,000 years.
This theme, with its hybrid and marvellous dimension, is particularly conducive to unleashing the imagination, and will enable everyone (participants, public, partners) to discover their heritage and develop their creativity.

This project combines the transmission of heritage know-how with artistic practice in the form of workshops culminating in a participative creation that will take place in a cultural eco-environment, the garden of visual artists Juliette and Jacques Damville, creators of the association Les Chemins de traverses, to raise awareness of nature and living things through discovery and sharing. This unique space, “the garden of metamorphoses”, populated with animal totems and ceramic fountains, ponds and plant niches hosting a rich biotope, is itself a tribute to the animal world, both artistic and ecological.

LE CHANTS DE LA TERRE will focus on the following themes:
Artistic transmission
• Plastic arts workshops: visual artists Jacques and Juliette Damville will be leading drawing, modelling and prototyping workshops, using local techniques and know-how to create zoomorphic instruments in enamelled clay: whistles, calls, flutes and ocarinas, which will be used in musical compositions. They will also make wind spheres. Assembled together, they will form a sound tree, like an expressive ceramic musical sculpture, which will be part of the creative process.

• Voice and creation workshops: De Caelis will offer participants a unique, immersive experience: initiation, singing, improvisation, handling clay instruments and creation. De Caelis will be responsible for the musical commission of a participatory work combining voice and earthen sound objects, its preparation during workshops and its public creation. The participants will be placed at the heart of the process, experiencing contemporary creation as actors. One of the workshops will take place in the forest, providing an opportunity to work on the relationship between music and nature, with exercises based on listening, imitation and invention.
These various workshops will be aimed at all ages, from teenagers to adults, with the only requirements being commitment, curiosity and openness. Meeting and sharing with local residents:
• Music in the garden: in the garden of the Chemins de traverses eco-location, the De Caelis ensemble will be offering impromptu musical performances during visits to the sculptures and natural surroundings of this extraordinary garden. Open to all, they will provide an opportunity to discover both the vocal ensemble and the Chemins des traverses project.
• Coffee-meetings: convivial moments of exchange about land work in the Pays de Bray and medieval music will be organized throughout the year and will contribute to the project.

Artistic Journey – Mahaut, Girl of wood

Around the show Mahaut, Girl of wood, De Caelis is offering a series of educational activities to discover the world of the show.

For primary and secondary school pupils, music schools and conservatoires.
Speakers: Francesca Congiu, opera artist and puppeteer; Anouch Paré, playwright; Laurence Brisset, artistic director of De Caelis
Laurence Brisset, artistic director of De Caelis, singing teacher at the CRR de Saint-Maur and musical director of the project; Jean-Lou Descamps, musicians.

Meetings
Open rehearsals
All rehearsals, from the first readings to the dress rehearsal, can be open to groups, so that they can watch the various stages of creation. The only essential condition is that you inform the entire team in advance.

Meetings with the artists
Encounters with an artist who talks about his craft and singing, playing/singing a few extracts, and explaining masks and puppets.

Discovering medieval music

Discover the medieval world and imagination by listening to and exploring some of the works in detail. Examples played and sung live or recorded.
Discover the period instrumentarium: organetto, medieval fiddles, guiterne, flutes.
Possibility of having amateur musicians and singers/choristers work on extracts.
The works worked on could be performed on stage around the time of the show, as a curtain raiser for example.

Discovery and practical workshops

Voice games
Exploring and discovering the different registers of the spoken and sung voice, high, low, medium, discovering dynamics and timbres, different ways of putting your voice down.
Hand games
One or two puppets from the show will come and talk to the children about the show they will be seeing. Quickly make a small paper puppet. Playing with small puppets, exploring their different movement possibilities (walking, sitting, looking…) and then trying to get them to talk little by little.
Verbal juggling
A jugglers’ workshop, for an old-fashioned “shout-out”. Until the 12th century, “jugglers” were itinerant professional artists who sang or recited literary works or poetry, composed by troubadours and trouvères, in palaces, stately courts, public squares, streets, fairs and markets.

Creative workshops

Writing workshop based on the work of Anouch Paré
Construction of scenes and dialogues. Discover Anouch Paré’s writing: her poetic and sensory world, the journey of initiation, the trials to be endured, the moral of the story. Specificity of writing for puppets, archetypes, representations of reality, possible imaginary fields.
Musical creation workshop
Musical creation workshops can be devised and run by a teacher who has previously worked with De Caelis (for all types of audience, not necessarily musicians). An opportunity to give free rein to your imagination through sound.
Creating a short text + music piece
These two types of creative workshop combined can result in the setting to music of the text written in the writing workshops, leading to the creation of a short musical theatre piece that can be performed as the opening act of one of the sessions.

LES FILEUSES: CREATION AND REGIONAL PROJECT IN FLERS ET ATHIS DE L’ORNE (61)

A creative project involving the people of Flers, Athis and the surrounding area, Les fileuses will take as its source, inspiration and theme the history of weaving in Flers and the surrounding area, which has been linked to the textile industry since the Middle Ages.

By combining the historical past (medieval music, songs, ballads), the heritage of Flers and its region (the history of weaving), and personal memories (poetic and musical recollections, life stories, collections), De Caelis will create a musical work with a temporary choir formed around the project. It will be an intergenerational project, reaching out to children, adults and the elderly, giving access to creation and voice work to audiences who are sometimes far removed from it.

Artists associated with the project: Antoine Berland (www.antoineberland.com), composer; Dominique and Benoit Delommez and l’EstrAde (www.lestrade-art.com); Marjolaine Salvador Morel, lace-maker, visual artist (https://marjolainesalvadormorel.fr).

Several events are planned throughout 2024 as part of the project:
• Singing workshops
• Memory cafés, meetings, discussions, and collection of family stories
• Musical commission, rehearsals, and creation. The piece will « weave » the collected words, mechanical rhythms, and electronic sounds. It will involve amateur musicians who participated in the workshops with the De Caelis ensemble.
• Meeting with Marjolaine Salvador Morel on thread and lace work.

Voice creation workshops - Athis

LES JEUNES VOIX BUISSONNIÈRES COMPETITION

Discover the laureates!

The De Caelis ensemble, in partnership with the Théâtre du Château de la Ville d’Eu, a nationally-renowned stage for “texts and voices” – Art en Territoire, has launched the “LES JEUNES VOIX BUISSONNIÈRES” programme, with the aim of supporting the professional development of young artists. This programme is supported by the DRAC Normandie as part of the France relance programme.

As part of this, it organised the first edition of a competition for young voice/instrument duos.

Two laureate duos for the 2022 edition were selected for the quality and originality of their artistic proposals:

– Marion Jacquemet, mezzo-soprano et Benjamin Pras, piano

– Jennifer Pellagaud, soprano et Juliette Aridon, piano

Each duo was awarded a prize, training for a concert in residence at the Théâtre du Château d’Eu, the production of a video teaser for their future publicity, and the organisation of a concert tour of Normandy.

Les Jeunes Voix Buissonnières concert dates :

· 18 February 2022 at 8pm at the Media Library of Mers-les-Bains (76)

· 19 February 2022 at 8pm at the Notre-Dame Church, Saint-Martin-Le-Gaillard (76)

· 20 February 2022 at 8pm at the Théâtre du Château d’Eu (76)

· 25 June 2022 at 4pm at Domfront Theater (61)

Discover the laureates on video :

– Duo Marion Jacquemet/Benjamin Pras :

– Duo Jennifer Pellagaud/Juliette Aridon

Listening Booth “I hear voices”

The desire to reach out to all audiences, over a long period of time, in sometimes unlikely places, gave De Caelis the idea of building a travelling listening booth. Manufactured by Behind the Curtain, a company based in La Manche, the booth allows anyone to sit down, put on headphones and enjoy a journey of sound made up of recordings from De Caelis and sound tracks linked to the events organised around the installation of the booth.

It has been installed in places such as a secondary school, a retirement home, an AMAP, a trade fair, a theatre lobby, a media library and a home for the disabled….

Les Thébaïdes – Spiritualité du désert *Creation 2023

Las Huelgas Manuscript (14th century) / Sufi Chant / Creation
6 female singers and organetto
Guest artist: Alia Sellami, vocals

This programme bears the echo of thebaids in different places, religions, languages and eras.
A tribute to feminine spirituality, it is the fruit gathered from our own deserts, where we share a taste for questioning, doubt and wonder. Symbolic of a chosen, intimate solitude, or a real, physical desert, these two spaces are consonant in their immensity. Medieval music, poetry and contemporary music invite us to explore them.
The desert of Thebes was the refuge of the first Christians, and since then the name Thebaid has been applied to any place, even a symbolic one, where people isolate themselves to lead a life of asceticism and prayer, where they “empty” themselves of the world to achieve a second birth. Evocative of withdrawal and trial, but also a place of revelation, the desert links the three monotheistic religions.
In the Middle Ages, in the West, the desert referred to the hermitage, forest, islands, monasteries—A metaphor for a solitary life in which people come to contemplate ‘invisible realities’, pray and sing. Among the Sufis, Khalwa describes both the action of isolating oneself and the place where one isolates oneself: nature, the desert, the cave, the cell. It is a path to knowledge through ‘enlightenment and spiritual openness’. The use of song, the breath embodied in sound, has always been associated with worship as a means of meditation, prayer and ecstasy.
In the Christian Middle Ages, we turn to the manuscript of Las Huelgas, a women’s monastery founded in the twelfth century in Spain, a land where East and West converged for centuries.
The deserts of the East are evoked by the voice of Alia Sellami singing Sufi songs handed down orally from generation to generation.
Today’s thebaids are present with a contemporary piece, Khalwa, by Alia Sellami, as well as improvisations.

> Released in May 2024 – Bayard Musique

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Monthly Archives: February 2025