Cosmic Duet

Organized by: ENSEMBLE TELEMAQUE

Since its formation in Marseille in 1994, Ensemble Télémaque has dedicated itself to creating and performing works of our time. Georges Boeuf, Régis Campo and Pierre-Adrien Charpy, composers from the south, as well as Thierry Machuel, Jean-Luc Hervé, Tatiana Catanzaro, François Narboni, Kasia Glowicka, Bernard Cavanna, Ivan Fedele, Sarah Lianne Lewis, Bekah Simms, Richard Baker, James Callahan, Lynn Plowman… receive commissions from the ensemble, which champions the greatest aesthetic openness.

In the 2000s, under the impetus of Raoul Lay, the Télémaque music company developed original ways of combining music with other performing arts. Olivier Py, Bernard Kudlak (Cirque Plume), Catherine Marnas, Nathalie Pernette and Frédéric Flamand are among Télémaque's artistic partners, working with the music of Mauricio Kagel, Steve Reich and Raoul Lay himself.

The ensemble has also always performed in concert at some of the most innovative music venues and events in France and abroad: Festival d’Ile de France, Festival Présences at Radio-France, Cité de la Musique in Paris, National Auditorium of Madrid, Gaudeamus Music Week in Amsterdam, Enescu Festival in Bucharest, Flagey Hall in Brussels, Venice Biennale, New Music Week in Shanghai, CCK in Buenos Aires, Spring Festival in Malta… Over the past ten years, Télémaque has performed in more than 15 countries.

Alongside creating new works, Télémaque is committed to awakening curiosity and making all contemporary musical styles available to everyone, everywhere. To this end, it has developed a particular focus on young audiences, with projects for children as spectators (Nokto, La mort Marraine, La revue de Cuisine), as singing participants (La jeune fille aux mains d’argent, King Kong) and/or as percussionists (Nous d’ici-bas).

After serving in 2011 as the lead ensemble in the ECO (European Contemporary Orchestra) project, an acoustic and electric ensemble of 33 musicians devoted to new creations, Télémaque joined the Pôle Instrumental Contemporain (PIC) in 2013 and embarked on a local project that earned it the Atelier de Fabrique artistique designation, awarded by the Ministry of Culture in 2016.

In 2016, in partnership with around fifteen regional organizations, the company organized a major event called Grandes musiques pour petites oreilles. The success of the first two editions led to the creation in 2019 of Tous en sons, the first national festival of music for young people, now independent but still supported by Télémaque, which remains a key partner.

Since 2018, Télémaque and Raoul Lay have been developing the October Lab project, an international platform for musical creation and exchange. From 2019 onward, the ensemble has traveled to perform in, Shangaï, Nanning, and soon Montréal, Winnipeg, Cardiff…

In 2021 and 2022, during the lockdown period, Télémaque created the Mondes Sonores en Territoire program, supported by the Centre National de la Musique. It was in this context that « Trois Corolles », a work by Pierre-Adrien Charpy, was created for students at eight conservatories in Région Sud, across three departments, involving more than two-hundred-fifty participants: students, teachers and Télémaque professionals.

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