The Constellations festival is back on 1, 2 and 3 September 2023!
Constellations showcases emerging jazz groups in a programme produced with six Parisian music collectives.
Remarkable for its diversity and openness, Constellations in 2023 is the meeting point for Déluge, Fondeur de Son, LEM, Onze Heures Onze, Pousse-Pousse Productions and Real Time Music. The collectives are united around common values including sharing and conviviality. This year’s edition of 2023 will take a further step towards diversity and parity in music. Four special guests have been invited to join the festivities: Sakina Abdou (saxophonist), Tatiana Paris (guitarist and bassist), Léa Ciechelski (saxophonist) and Laurence Bourdin (hurdy-gurdy player).
The Constellations festival takes place every year in collaboration with Villette Makerz, the Parc de la Villette’s collaborative laboratory, and as part of Jazz à la Villette.
The Grands Formats federation is proud to be one of the partners of the Constellations 2023 Festival.
AGENDA
Friday 1st September
FOLIE L5 – VILLETTE MAKERZ
10:00-16:00 – MASTERCLASS : Instrumentalist / Improvisation, Composition, Creation with Sylvaine Hélary
Flautist, soloist, naturally linking contemporary music, jazz and various currents of new music.
16:00-18:00 – Workshop: Questioning your role in gender equality with the collectives and Jean-Michel Aubry Journet (co-founder of #Musictoofrance).
Our “gender equality” approach is highlighted by a number of key features: a programme with equal numbers of female and male guests, testimonials and round tables led by and for those who are changing the world, and work in various workshops, including one for men, to learn how to deconstruct and reconstruct our professional behaviour.
19:00 – ROUND TABLE | Jazz and professional integration: what tools are needed to support young musicians? in collaboration with Grands Formats moderated by Raphaëlle Tchamitchian
Sakina Abdou – Goodbye Ground © GG
CONCERTS
20:00 : Sakina Abdou, Goodbye Ground + Tatiana Paris, GIBBON (Guest concert)
Two solos, one encounter:
Sakina, a saxophonist expressing herself in a multi-accented language combining the sinuosities of a very free jazz phrasing with the thickness and roughness of the raw sounds she delivers through a wide range of techniques on her instrument.
Tatiana is a guitarist who uses wooden and metal objects and a horde of effects to interact with the raw gesture, creating more intense spaces in which recorded tapes and amplified bazaars shake about, over which a poetic text, often self-tuned, is cobbled together.
21:00 : Laurence Bourdin, Hurdy Gurdy #Myst (Guest concert)
A new creation performed with video artist and performer Benoît Voarick. The project stems from a poetic questioning of the mystery that emanates from certain places, and a confrontation with the hurdy-gurdy, an age-old musical instrument.
Saturday 2nd September
JARDINS PARTAGÉS DU PARC DE LA VILLETTE
10:00 – Workshop: The music of the commons
A large-scale collective improvisation in the shared gardens of the Parc de la Villette, open to children, parents, onlookers, amateur musicians and those keen to discover new things, to make music resonate with musicians from the festival. Participants can bring their own instruments, and others will be made available.
14:30 – Workshop: “Traditional music today”
Thanks to Sami Waro, a leading specialist in maloya and Réunionese percussion, we’ll be exploring the most contemporary aspects of this music and thinking about how it can be blended. Sami will be presenting and giving the opportunity to try out emblematic instruments, as well as more modern ones like his chromatic kora. For all audiences, musicians and non-musicians alike.
Fragrance © Elisabeth Froment
CONCERTS
FOLIE J5, PARC DE LA VILLETTE, SIDE CANAL
16:30 : Fragrance (Pousse-Pousse Production)
With the idea of painting through her music, Margot Rivaille, author, composer and pianist at the head of the Fragrance ensemble, leads the listener through grandiose, immersive landscapes. The group stands out for its unique line-up: four female voices and two wind instruments (trombone and alto saxophone) backed by a bass/drums/piano trio.
18:00: Free Human Zoo (Le LEM)
“In the beginning was rhythm… Free Human Zoo plays Man and animal, the freedom of notes that strike, notes that dance, notes that get lost. Through long cosmogonic pieces, the ensemble draws up a succession of narrative tableaux with a grainy, organic rhythm, reconciling instinct and intellect. Never a show of force, but an intersection of desires and the extreme jubilation of an accepted hybridity.
19:30: Le JarDin (Déluge)
A gardener of sound, Julien Dubois cultivates a plant-based semantics to nourish an imagination in which the organic sound of the saxophone rubs shoulders with the mineral timbres of synthesizers.
21:00: Alexandre Herer Nunataq (Onze Heures Onze)
Alexandre Herer, Gaël Petrina and Pierre Mangeard summon the spirit of icy deserts to question the choices of modern man, inspiring music that is open, ethereal and deliberately cold. Often soaring and heady, the trio’s music is based on rhythm and groove, sometimes experimental, sometimes simple.
Sunday 3rd September
JARDINS PARTAGÉS DU PARC DE LA VILLETTE
14:00 – Workshop: The music of the commons
A large-scale collective improvisation in the shared gardens of the Parc de la Villette, open to children, parents, onlookers, amateur musicians and those keen to discover new things, to make music resonate with musicians from the festival. Participants can bring their own instruments, or others will be made available.
Pégânes © Léa Chorot
CONCERTS
FOLIE J5, PARC DE LA VILLETTE, SIDE CANAL
15:00 : Léa Ciechelski MEIJE
Saxophonist, flutist, improviser and composer Léa Ciechelski plays and composes for a number of ensembles. Meije is the fruit of a number of improvised encounters and is the result of research into harsh, bewitching sounds and textures. This aerial, aquatic trio’s universe, dotted with minimalist compositions, paints vast sonic spaces and dreamlike landscapes.
16:30: Astargallus (Real Time Music)
A resolutely contemporary jazz group playing original compositions, Astargallus has a tried-and-tested formula (sax, trumpet, double bass, drums) that it pushes to the limit. After a 10-year break, the musicians are back at it again, all enriched by their various experiences during that time.
18:00: Pégânes (Le Fondeur de Son)
Freely inspired by Giordano Bruno and the figure of the flying donkey (Pégase-âne), the musicians in this quartet improvise, sometimes freely and sometimes according to principles and modules. The result is a baroque, exploratory landscape punctuated by jubilant free jazz moments.
Constellations, an independent music festival labelled Under The Radar by Jazz à La Villette, is coordinated by the association Juste Avant l’Aube.
Partners of Constellations Festival 2023
