Discovery and science
The 2018 edition of the Messiaen Festival in the Land of La Meije, through three serenades performed by students from the Paris Conservatory of Music and Dance, celebrated the remarkable ties between the Russian and European avant-garde movements.
This year, the Festival returns to the Garden for a series of events:
Saturday, July 27, 2019:
Discussion: Living as a bird
Vinciane Despret is a philosopher and psychologist, and a professor at the University of Liège.
After discovering the work of ethologists, she turned her research toward the philosophy of science. She has published numerous books on animals and animal scientists (Quand le loup habitera avec l’agneau [When the Wolf Lives with the Lamb], Penser comme un rat [Thinking Like a Rat], Que diraient les animaux si on leur posait les bonnes questions ? [What Would Animals Say If We Asked Them the Right Questions?]), as well as a children's book, Le Chez-Soi des animaux [The Home of Animals] (Actes Sud, 2017), of which Habiter en oiseau is, in a way, the sequel.
See you at 10 a.m. , in the conference room of the Galerie de l'Alpe, at the entrance to the garden. Admission €7 (€5 for festival-goers).
Screening of the film Le Peuple Migrateur (2001, duration: 1 hour 38 minutes)
Directed by: Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud
Music: Bruno Coulais
The story of migratory birds is one of promise... The promise of a return. The arrival of spring in the northern hemisphere makes the highlands of the Arctic accessible once again, where many migratory birds breed. But around the North Pole, summer is short and autumn quickly heralds the time for the great departures to the milder climes of the south, all the way to the tropics. They will return, out of necessity... to survive.
At 2:30 p.m. in the conference room of the Galerie de l'Alpe. Admission €7 (€5 for festival-goers).
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
Round table discussion with Michaël Levinas
Michaël Levinas is the guest composer for this 22nd edition of the Messiaen Festival in the Pays de la Meije. Composer, pianist, teacher, founder of the Itinéraire ensemble, and trained by Olivier Messiaen, among others, he is a prominent and influential figure, recognized both in France and internationally. Philosopher and musicologist Danielle Cohen-Levinas invites us to discover the work and thinking of this great artist.
Michaël Levinas (born in 1949) is internationally renowned in the fields of musical composition and performance. His works have been premiered and performed by the most prestigious ensembles, festivals, and institutions in France and abroad. He is a pioneer in the renewal of composition and the expansion of the sound palette through his in-depth knowledge of acoustics and technological environments. His affinity for text, literature, and poetry is at the heart of the exchanges and close bond he maintained throughout his life with his father, the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, who instilled in him a love of languages, thought, artistic risk-taking, performance, and writing.
Meet at 10 a.m. in the conference room of the Galerie de l'Alpe. Admission €7 (€5 for festival-goers)
Concerts by the Musicians of the Orquesta de Instrumentos Autoctonos y Nuevas Tecnologias, under the artistic and musical direction of Alejandro Iglesias Rossi
Founded in 2004 by Alejandro Iglesias Rossi and Susana Ferreres at the Universidad Tres de Febrero in Buenos Aires (Argentina), the Orquesta de Instrumentos Autoctonos y Nuevas Tecnologias carries out interdisciplinary work in research, composition, performance, instrument making, mask creation, and more. placing pre-Columbian instruments, those inherited from European tradition, and those developed by new technologies and digital technology on an equal footing. The members of the orchestra are both creators and performers of their own works, as well as designers of the masks and instruments used in concerts.
Two concerts at 2:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. Admission €7 (€5 for festival-goers). Open-air concerts, moved indoors in case of bad weather.
Thursday, August 1, 2019
10 a.m.: Meeting with Michel Fano, composer - From Messiaen's class to "sound scores" in cinema
Born in 1929, Michel Fano is a musician, composer, writer, and pioneer in the field of film music. A former student of Olivier Messiaen, Michel Fano will talk about the famous analysis and aesthetics class he attended between 1950 and 1952 and the classmates and companions he met there, such as Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Michel Fano is above all a true sound researcher in cinema; he has written the "sound scores" for many of Alain Robbe-Grillet's films, collaborated with Jean-Pierre Mocky and Jean Rouch, and taught courses on sound aesthetics in cinema for nearly fifty years. This is an opportunity for him to share his memories as a composer and, of course, to talk to us about his personal conception of the relationship between sound, image, and narrative in cinema.
Admission €7 (€5 for festival-goers).
2:30 p.m.: Screening of Le Territoire des autres ( 1970, duration: 1 hour 32 minutes) in the presence of Michel Fano
Directed by: François Bel, Gérard Vienne, Michel Fano, Jacqueline Lecompte
Images: François Bel, Gérard Vienne
Soundtrack: Michel Fano
Seven years of filming animals in the wild so that viewers can become furtive witnesses to an unknown life: this is the challenge so successfully met by the directors of The Territory of Others. Man, the hereditary enemy, had to watch, scrutinize, and wait each time. An extraordinary achievement of patience and talent, this film is more than a documentary; it is pure visual pleasure. From poetry to dramatic intensity, the animal world reveals itself to us in all its natural dignity.
Admission: €7 (€5 for festival-goers).
