Music in the Belly, K. H. Stockhausen / S. Steen-Andersen – 28 september 2022 – Th. de Hautepierre, Strasbourg, FR – World premiere
Simon Steen-Andersen pays tribute to Karlheinz Stockhausen by staging his dream of music in the belly…
In 1975, Karlheinz Stockhausen composed an enigmatic work for the Percussions de Strasbourg. The score contained more stage directions and didascules than music – and the music consisted of twelve melodies linked to the signs of the zodiac, the Tierkreis cycle, and embodied in music boxes that the composer had made himself. The idea for the piece and its title came from his daughter Julika’s surprise when, at the age of two, she discovered small noises inside her, stomach rumbling: “You have music in your belly”, he replied. A few years later, he suddenly woke up one morning after dreaming the play and put it down on paper.
Nearly fifty years after the composition and premiere of the work at the Royan Festival, the Percussions de Strasbourg asked Simon Steen-Andersen to imagine a new production. While remaining faithful to the score and without adding a single note, the Danish artist reveals a potential for today’s eyes and ears through the use of scenic processes and technologies directly inspired by other pieces by Stockhausen. A simple question guided his approach: what could Music in the belly have looked like in Stockhausen’s dream, before he even woke up?
World premiere, as part of the Musica Festival
La Fête Sauvage de L. Antunes – La Comète, Chalons-en-Champagne, FR – 3 october 2022
La Fête Sauvage required more than two years of filming in the four corners of the world, in Africa, Asia and South America, for director Frédéric Rossif to create this ode to nature and the animals that inhabit it.
Captured in their daily lives, they perform a ballet in front of the cameras that retraces their history. In freedom, giraffes, sloths, anteaters and so many others are revealed in their intimacy, their moments of hunting, resting, playing or even their amorous conquests… Presenting us with a world devoid of any human presence, Rossif wished to reconnect with a lost Eden. He profoundly revolutionised environmental and wildlife cinema, creating a unique visual language in which slow-motion and other montages transcend animal beauty. When it was released in 1976, the film was a huge success, selling almost a million tickets. The original score was by electronic music pioneer Vangelis. To give new life to this visual masterpiece, Lucie Antunes brings all the telluric energy that characterises her musical language. She conceived this sound creation for the Percussions de Strasbourg, augmented by an electronic musician (Axel Rigaud). For our ensemble, she weaves a unique link between acoustic instruments, electronic machines and images. This encounter between the visual and sound worlds of Frédéric Rossif and Lucie Antunes, supported by exceptional musicians, gives nature back all its power and raw strength as well as its purity. A unique moment not to be missed.
Première at the festival War on screen
l‘Air(e) – T. De Mey, F. Filidéi, P. Jodlowski – Decentralised Concerts – European Community of Alsace
s part of the decentralised concerts organised by the European Community of Alsace, the show l’Air(e) will be performed in the towns of Brumath on 9 October, Marckolsheim on 15 October, and Ensisheim on 2 November. In 2016, François Papirer, Rémi Schwartz and Enrico Pedicone developed a programme of contemporary music for young audiences, presenting the diversity of percussion instruments around the world. The show evolves in 2018 and builds a new identity within the Percussions de Strasbourg: the trio No Bad Vibes is born. Today, their show l’Air(e), is a protean object where the universe of rock, the demands of contemporary music, the power of electro, and the Dadaism of an instrumental theatre are mixed together.
9 october 2022 – Brumath
15 october 2022 – Marckolsheim
2 november 2022 – Ensisheim
Only – A. Zubel, Y. Song, Y. Hwang, N. Ettlin – Creative works
Title inspired by “I’m only a person”, a quote from Canadian humorist Tig Notaro’s Boyish Girl Interrupted. With a stage composed of six men, in total opposition to that of MUSIC IN THE BELLY, the Percussions de Strasbourg are emerging from the very first research workshops around four new works without percussion instruments, under the gaze of four young creators: the composers Agata Zubel, Yang Song, Yijoo Hwang and the choreographer Noémie Ettlin.
Creation season 2023-2024
Burning Bright, H. Dufourt – Abbaye de Royaumont – 3 september 2022
Written for the fiftieth anniversary of the Percussions de Strasbourg, Burning Bright borrows its title from one of the most famous poems in English literature, William Blake’s The Tyger, published in 1794.
Conceived as a single piece, like an immense adagio in the manner of Bruckner, Burning Bright is a poetic vision that breaks with traditional types of delimitation, contours or fences. The music rises in layers, in sheets, or unfolds in broad and diffuse emergences. The timbres draw their own space of resonance and are arranged in depth, in the indefinite flight of a horizon. The sounds swell, diffuse or twist, intermingling like fluids or gases. The work on the timbre is only an art of retouching. The drift of coloured masses replaces the play of formal configurations typical of the last century. Friction techniques take precedence over those of percussion.
Like Blake’s poem, Burning Bright mobilises the primary energies: a drama without narrative or anecdote, a form that is generated and seeks its unity through telluric tremors. The immense space that we discover, a space in the style of Kubrick, could well become, despite the hopes of our time, that of an eternal confinement.
100 cymbals, R. Ikeda – festival Sacrum Profanum, Krakow, PL – 4 september 2022
One evening, ten percussionists, one hundred cymbals for a show that combines visual, conceptual and musical performance. Or when, from abstraction and pure sound, light and harmony are born.
A simple brass and bronze disc, used more to underline a strong beat than to take centre stage, the cymbal plays the leading role here! Created in 2019 in Los Angeles, 100 cymbals brings out all the multitude of harmonic layers of the instrument. A key figure in electronic music and art, the composer and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda is known for mixing physical phenomena with mathematical notions. As for the Percussions de Strasbourg, they have been one of the leading groups in contemporary music since their creation in 1962.
But what about the noise of crumpling paper… by John Cage celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dada co-founder Hans Arp, and was composed in 1986 for Les Percussions de Strasbourg. But Cage did not specify the number of players, the durations, the tempo or the repetitions. There is only a system of five different punctuation marks that must be reinterpreted for each performance. The Japanese sound and video artist Ryoji Ikeda has created a new version of this conceptual score.
Invariants, Bach, Levinas, Takemitsu – Flanders festival, Gent, BE – 18 september 2022
Working on time – sometimes relaxed, sometimes constrained – rather than on dynamics, imperceptibly approaching dance and the movements it induces, these are the starting points of the Invariants project.
Interspersed between three Trio Sonatas for Organ by Johann-Sebastian BACH, Rain Tree (1981) by Tōru TAKEMITSU and Les Invariants (2021) by Michaël LEVINAS take the German composer’s works back and forth in time.
Several centuries after their composition, these sonatas continue to adapt to their time without losing their essence, and the presence of works from our own time reminds us that Johann Sebastian Bach remains very much alive.
Concerts at 1.30, 3.30 and 5.30 pm
Festival website
Ensemble ULYSSES
The Ulysses ensemble, made up this year of 5 percussionists, accompanied by Rémi Schwartz, soloist at the Percussions de Strasbourg, will be in concert at two festivals in September!
Festival Gaudeamus – Utrecht, NL – 9 september
- Programme :
- James Alexandropoulos-McEwan new work for 6 percussionnists and électronic (2022)
- Per Nørgård Square and Round (1985)
- Iannis Xenakis Métaux, extrait de Pléiades (1978-1979)
- Mioko Yokoyama new work for 6 percussionniste (2022)
Festival Automne de Varsovie, POL – 21 september
- Programme :
- James Alexandropoulos-McEwan
- new work for 6 percussionnists and électronic (2022)
- Malika Kishino Sange (2016)
- Kazimierz Serocki Continuum (1965-1966)
- Mioko Yokoyama
- new work for 6 percussionnists (2022)
- Iannis Xenakis Métaux & Peaux, extraits de Pléiades (1979)
Strasculture – 3 september
On the occasion of the annual meeting of the cultural associations of Strasbourg, find the stand of the Percussions de Strasbourg all day on the Place du Château in Strasbourg.
Come and meet us and discover or rediscover our concerts, musical activities, workshops and instrumentarium visits!
European Heritage Day – 18 september
As every year on the occasion of the European Heritage Days, the Percussions de Strasbourg organise visits of their legendary instrumentarium. Free guided tours of 45 minutes at 10am, 11am, 12pm, 2pm, 3pm and 4pm.
Reservation at 0388277504 or at
All infos ici