October lab #7 : Sounds, Tears and Skins (Pic)

Inside STS: an American journey In 2018, Ensemble Télémaque created October Lab, an international platform dedicated to musical creation, whose purpose is to produce and disseminate new works at the crossroads of styles and aesthetics. Through commissions awarded to composers from around the world, it explores constantly evolving themes. Sounds, Tears and Skins marks Ensemble Télémaque’s first collaboration with artists from the United States. Under the direction of Raoul Lay, the ensemble is commissioning works this year from a new generation of American composers: Yu-Hui Chang, John Aylward and Kate Soper, joined by Jingmian Gong and Dylan Needleman, doctoral composition students met at Brandeis University. Their creations draw on French and American texts, written significantly or having left a mark in Marseille and the USA. The project brings five major figures of modern literature into dialogue: Mary Jane Gold (Crossroads Marseilles, 1940), Franz Werfel, Antonin Artaud, Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud. All of them, to varying degrees, were discriminated against because of their gender, and/or their origins, and/or their differences (ethnic or religious affiliation, political beliefs, sexual orientation, mental health conditions…). Through history, before, during or after the Second World War, each work explores the notions of travel, migration and the history of minorities along a Marseille–United States axis.