Ensemble Mêtis DIALOG
An immersive concert where voices, instruments, electronics and musical theatre dialogue to create a real indoor screen.
Five pieces for piano**(2004-2017), 10’, for solo piano.
La Girelle
The Lavre and the L. van B Night Paper.
The fly
The Couple
Mantinanda for piano
Equal and Opposite**(2026), 9’, for counter-tenor voice, violin and cello.
Commission of Ensemble Mêtis. With the support of SACEM.
Cyril Molesti
Shadow seeds* (2026), 8’, for flute, saxophone, piano, viola, cello and double bass.
Commission of Ensemble Mêtis.
Five Minutes of Pure Cinema*(2026), 5’, for violin, viola and double bass.
A new score for Five Minutes of Pure Cinema(1926) by Henri Chomette. Composed as part of NIMAcademy under the mentorship of Martin Matalon.
Alireza Farhang
COLLAPSE,triptych (2026)
I. Within** 11’
II. Texture**- 15’
III. Rise**- 4’
Musical play for flute, saxophone, voice of violin, piano, violin, viola, cello, bass, electronics and images.
Composed for the solistes of Ensemble Mêtis, with the support of Ministry of Culture.first part: Claudia Rankine
Second part: Alireza Farhang
Visual creation : Hugo Arcier
The solists of Ensemble Mêtis
Keiko Murakami: flute
Alberto Chaves: saxophone
Leopold Laforge: against tenor
Stefanos Thomopoulos: piano
Violin Darmon: violin
Yona Zekri: viola
Justine Péré : cello
Noah Constant: double bass
Alireza Farhang: keyboard
Monica Gil Giraldo: RIM
Guest artist:
Bruno Boulzaguet : stage director and lighting design
Total duration: 65’
DIALOG I
For its second edition, the NIMFA festival places at the heart of its programming screen music, considered as a meeting space between sound, image, movement and scene. This axis is not limited to composed music to accompany a film: it questions more broadly how music can prolong, move or contradict the image, but also create a true “interior screen” in the audience.
Central programme of this edition, DIALOG Iis part of the international project DIALOG – Across Oceans, carried by the Ensemble Mêtis. Reuniting composers and composers of different generations and horizons, the concert makes instrumental music dialogue, vocal writing, electronics, experimental cinema and musical theatre. He draws a journey from the most intimate listening to an immersive experience in which sound, text, image, light and space become the components of the same dramaturgy.
With Equal and Opposite, Yvette Jackson extends his practice of radio opera. Its composition is recursively deployed: an idea is transformed through a process embedded in another, itself contained in a larger structure. Rather than offering a unique and predetermined narrative, the work creates a sound space that each listener completes from his experiences, memories and knowledge. Here, the screen is mental: it forms in the imagination of the listener.
The new work of Cyril Molesti explores the construction of vast "sound clouds". Constituted with heights from variable density spectrum, these clouds are distributed in the registers and in time to form trendy pointillistic structures. The orchestration connects their different points and makes them appear as monstrous macro-objects, composed of gestures. Harmonic density, filtering, compression and temporal expansion, anamorphosis and instrumental energy contribute to creating a mobile, almost visual sound material.
♪ Piano PiecesGiorgos Koumendakis opened another relationship to the image: that of a landscape reconstructed by memory. Issues in the universe of Mediterranean Desert, they belong to a cycle of twenty-two pieces inspired by Mediterranean fauna and flora. Plants, insects, fish and birds become protagonists of a sound mapping in which nature exceeds the simple description to acquire an emotional, almost symbolic dimension. Interpreted by Stéphanos Thomopoulos, pianist of Ensemble Mêtis, these pieces reveal an interior landscape made of harmonic colors, strata, resonance and memories.
The writing of Koumendakis combines delicateness, concentration and formal coherence, making dialogue the memories of the Mediterranean with different traditions of European pianistic writing.
Dans Type Writerfor violin alone, Koumendakis continues his exploration of transformation and memory. The instrumental gesture becomes bearer of a secret address, similar to a musical letter whose recipient remains out of the field. Free repetitions and microvariations gradually transform matter, while traces of tradition emerge, not as quotes, but as souvenirs through the present.
The screen then becomes tangible in a new work developed within the framework of NIMAcademy, under the supervision of Martin Matalon : Ji Young creates a score played live on Five minutes of pure cinema by Henri Chomette. In this film-concert, the music does not just illustrate the images. It reveals rhythms, contrasts, textures and tensions, thus opening new possibilities for interpretation. The film becomes a visual score with which the musicians dialogue in real time.
The concert culminates with COLLAPSEAlireza Farhang, a triptych for countertenor, together, electronic and image. Based on a poem by Claudia Rankine in the first movement, then on a text by Farhang in the second, the work explores what remains when the language begins to fragment. The visual creation of Hugo Arcier, associated with Bruno Boulzaguet’s staging and lights, transforms the space of the concert into a mental landscape where the physical presence of the singer confronts his shadow, his image and his memory. Through the three movements — Within, Textureand Rise— words dissolve gradually in the breath, vocal gestures and instrumental resonance.