Montée des ombres

MONTÉE DES OMBRES

60′ – 2016
a capella voice

On the occasion of Nuit Blanche 2016, Zad Moultaka takes us to the end of the Tuileries Tunnel for a continuous pre or post-historic procession of a dozen of singers … People of shadows on the move.
Invitation to our origins: allegorical cave, catabase, viste aux Enfers: a cathartic crossing. With the singers of Musicatreize and singers of Ile de France conducted by Roland Hayrabedian and Cécil Gallois.

Le tunnel des Tuileries
Opened on the right bank of the Seine in 1967, with a length of 831 meters, the Tuileries tunnel should be silenced and opened to pedestrian traffic by 2017. To celebrate this passage of time and this transformation of a road tunnel in a contemporary cavern, Zad Moultaka, accompanied by researchers from IRCAM, came down to Chauvet Cave, the oldest designed cave made to date by Homo Sapiens, to observe its immemorial paintings of horses and lions, listen to the silence and bring back some sound tracks of two or three rock shelters. Just as the spirits of the water and the caves reveal deep mysteries to Poliphile, the underground initiation ritual dreamed by the French-Lebanese artist intertwines a post-historical chorus of nearly 100 singers, professionals and amateurs alike, with high speakers, who broadcast sounds of earth and water: dripping, streaming and crackling. Creating the sensation of a telluric material in motion, the music sucks the visitor into the belly of Paris.

A processional ritual
In the middle of the tunnel, on the sidewalks along the walls on both sides, a hundred or so singers ready to embark the visitors are in the central alley, in a march or ritual procession led by the twelve singers of Musicatreize, taking each in his wake a chorus. The leader, at the head of the procession, leads the ensemble by chanting an “archaic” rhythm on a percussion, a kind of drum with a deep and powerful sound hanged on the neck.
The singers are also provided with small percussive objects: pieces of wood or claves, pebbles, clapping of hands and all kinds of utensils evoking sounds with primordial energies. Primal songs: a song based on very short intervals and a “raw” vocal material, (sung sounds, sprechgesang, murmurs, scansions in the low register of the voice,) arises during the procession, evoking the will of the first men to imitate – among other things – the sounds coming from nature, as if to appropriate the magical “souls” and “presences” that surround them and arouse fear.

It is also an invitation for us, men of today to reconnect with what we are losing day by day. Voice shadows: this song, this procession, is punctuated by a pause where everything freezes for ten seconds, in a deep silence like an inner prayer, a resonance in the center of oneself. This moment of silence is precious to me. From a symbolic point of view, these “vocal shadows” are like the resonance and projection of our voices projecting towards the beginning of our story.

Lights
About thirty singers with flashlights with which they light their companions walking in front of them, create oscillating shadows on the walls of the tunnel. These gleams evoke the poetic atmosphere of the caves, but also the fire that caused the destruction of the Tuileries in 1871. Water flows appear from time to time on the walls of the tunnel bringing out strange and ghostly characters.

set

mixed choirs and twelve singers 3S / 3A / 3T / 3B

Écoulement d’eau sur les murs du tunnel

Premiere : October 1st, 2016
Tunnel des Tuileries, Paris on the 2016 Nuit Blanche
run by the Musicatreize ensemble and Ile-de-France choirs
direction Roland Hayrabedian and Cécil Gallois.
Kaoli Isshiki, Élise Deuve, Claire Gouton sopranos Estelle Corre, Sarah Breton, Laure Ilef mezzos & alto Xavier de Lignerolles, Jérôme Cottenceau, Gilles Schneider ténors Patrice Balter, Grégoire Fohet-Duminil, Philippe Bergère baryton, bass.

Electronic part of the work done in IRCAM studios
Jérémie Henrot, Sylvain Cadars IRCAM sound engineers

in partnership with Ircam