Messiaen Festival: the TM+ Ensemble presents ‘Diffractions’

Diffractions emerged from a collaboration between TM+ and the visual artist Justine Emard. The musicians engage in a dialogue with an installation comprising some twenty glass sculptures, a device that is both auditory and visual and unfolds throughout the space. The listener is thus taken on an auditory journey in the form of an uninterrupted flow that blurs boundaries and seeks to reveal the works in their profound uniqueness. On stage, the eye listens to a moving, sound-producing sculpture, whilst the ear gazes upon the suspended glass sculptures and the glimmering instruments.

The programme unfolds in oscillating circles, centred on the recorded night-time song of a nightingale and *Le Rossignol en amour*, its derivative version, transposed and expanded for the piano by Tristan Murail. It passes through the greys and imaginary moors of Olivier Messiaen’s Courlis cendré and the stunning piece Oneïron by Alexandros Markeas. It rises, imperceptibly, at the dawn of Maurice Ravel’s Trio; it trembles in the Far Eastern mists of Lou Harrison’s Varied Trio. It plays on the ills of our predatory civilisation; it promises, between listening and looking, between Helena Tulve’s piece and Justine Emard’s mobile, a cascade of resonances and reflections on our nature and our ambiguity.

Ensemble TM+: Marc Desmons, conductor – Justine Emard, visual and sound installation.