Festival Messiaen: Ensemble TM+ presents “Diffractions

Diffractions is the result of a meeting between TM+ and visual artist Justine Emard. The musicians interact with an installation made up of some twenty glass sculptures, a sound and visual device that unfolds in space. The listener embarks on a listening journey in the form of an uninterrupted flow that blurs boundaries and tends to reveal the works in their profound singularity. The programme unfolds in oscillating circles around the nocturnal song of a recorded nightingale and the Nightingale in Love, its version derived, transposed and expanded for the piano by Tristan Murail. It passes through the imaginary greys and moors of Olivier Messiaen's Curlew and Alexandros Markeas's stunning piece Oneïron. It rises, imperceptibly, at dawn in Maurice Ravel's Trio, it trembles in the Far Eastern fumes of Lou Harrison's Varied Trio. It plays on the evils of our predatory civilisation, promising, between listening and looking, between Helena Tulve's piece and Justine Emard's mobile, a cascade of resonances and reflections on our nature and ambiguity.

Ensemble TM+:

Marc Desmons, conductor

Justine Emard, visual and sound installation