Albums

SEULS musically explores photographic spaces by taking various paths: classical music, jazz, film music and traditional music. Four movements structure the work: Doubles, Troubles, Dédoubles and Yalnız. Doubles takes “Multiple Personality Disorder” (MPD) as a subject. Troubles (Disorders) unfolds in the manner of a “Multiple Disorder Personality” (PMT). Dédoubles thinks of the four musicians as “Multiple Troubled Personalities” (MPT). If the first three movements are conceptualized from a combination of three letters, TPM-PMT-MPT, it is to find a musical corollary: the material exposed in the first movement is thus sown through the other two, but has different meanings. Everything is changing...

On stage, a giant screen reveals several photos of Laurent Thurin-Nal, like a scenographic space for the first three parts of the show. In the last movement, the viewer experiences a real reversal of perception, thanks to the photomontage short film, Yalnız. The public moves most of their attention from the auditory sphere, a concert, to the visual sphere, a movie concert, to build their own movie novel.

- Sara Picavet, Piano
- Sébastien Walnier, Cello
- Daniele Cappucci, Double
- Antonio Fusco, Drums

From June 9 to 12, 2020, Stéphane Orlando directed four young singers from the Center for Vocal Art and Ancient Music of Namur (Cav&MA) at the Royal Theater in Namur, to make an operatic film for which he also composed the music, under the attentive and creative camera of Thomas P. Decaro.

He designed the script for the movie The Smile with his son Hugo in a mini-series of five episodes of about 8 minutes, then remounted into a 27-minute movie. The Smile tells the story of a troubled young opera singer (Morgane Heyse) as she rehearses alone on a big empty stage. A prisoner of the theater, she feels overwhelmed by the place, then by the appearance of a chimera (Julie Vercauteren) who embodies fame and opulence, but also by the memory of a gangrenous passionate romantic relationship (Kamil Ben Hsaïn Lachiri).

Two poems by William Blake will show him the direction in his search for meaning: The Fly, about the fragility of existence, sung by the messenger (Pierre Derhet), then The Smile, which our heroine will sing at the end, about the search for sincerity beyond our social constructions of identity.

Building on this first operatic experience in front of the camera, Jean-Marie Marchal, director of Cav&ma and producer of the film, and Stéphane Orlando decided to perpetuate this modular contemporary vocal formation, by calling it Cave Cantores, and to immediately launch a new operatic film project.

From November 15 to 18 of the same year, Stéphane Orlando shot Night Falls at the Delta in Namur, another important cultural center in the Walloon capital. It features the singers of Cave Cantores with five voices, around the jazz singer Veronika Harcsa, the heroine of the story.

The internal struggle in question here is that of a singer living between two worlds, the classic of her illustrious cellist father (Jean-Paul Dessy) and the jazz dear to her heart of her saxophonist friends (Bo Van der Werf), guitarist (Bo Van der Werf), guitarist (Benjamin Sauzereau) and pianist (Benjamin Sauzereau), where she sees a possible key to more artistic freedom.

Four lines by William Blake from his poem Night, will guide the narration through different pieces of a puzzle of real and invented memories — we see her as a child trying to get her father's attention or delirious and immobile on the roof of the Delta. This hodgepodge of past, present and future crystallizes into a powerful musical bad trip with catastrophic consequences. Here again, the lyrics sung, written by Veronika Harcsa, help to understand evolution.

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Gibellina is a small Sicilian town known for contemporary architectures that were erected as bandages following the terrible devastating earthquake of 1968. The abandoned site of the ancient city was replaced by a Land Art masterpiece created by Alberto Burri, the Grande Cretto, built between 1985 and 1989. It is a monumental work, for which the artist imagined an immense flow of white cement running down the side of the mountain.

Large trenches were built, following the layout of the streets of the ancient city, allowing the visitor to move through this white labyrinth. In 2007, this concrete labyrinth of Minotaurian proportions was the surreal setting for Manuela Rastaldi's intimate choreographies, rendered in a beautiful, enveloping setting by the images of Thierry De Mey in “Sicilia: Vie de Gibellina”, whose aesthetic, so characteristic, leaves you speechless. In 2018, 50 years after the earthquake, Stéphane Orlando composed new music based on an 18-minute version of the film by Thierry De Mey for the Hopper Ensemble, to magnify the creative impulse of artists, who are always stronger to overcome devastating disasters, whether natural or human!

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Pour un rien explores the various inflections that the breath can generate from the accordion or its accordionist, until it becomes a very expressive flexible dance. In this piece, the accordion becomes the vehicle for a delicate and nuanced sonic exploration. The artist uses his breath, as well as the dynamics and resonance of the instrument, to create a diverse range of textures and emotions.

Each note, each chord is meticulously sculpted, revealing endless subtleties and variations. The performance unfolds as an intimate conversation between the accordionist and his instrument, where each breath transforms the sound space into an airy and poetic ballet. The accordionist's movements, flexible and graceful, blend with the music, creating a perfect symbiosis between sound and gesture.

Pour un rien is thus a celebration of the art of the accordion, a journey where the instrument breathes and dances, transforming the smallest nuances of breath into a rich and captivating musical expression.

La plus secrète mémoire des hommes
after a lecture of Mohamed Mbougar Sarr
a radio-concert by Stéphane Orlando

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The blackbird has inspired many artists. Olivier Messiaen wrote a wonderful piece called Merle noir in 1952 for flute and piano, and dedicated the second of his Petites esquisses d’oiseaux for piano in 1985 to the same animal. In 1966, Nina Simone performed a poignant Blackbird accompanied only by percussion, in which the bird is a metaphor for the persecuted young black American: “Why you wanna fly Blackbird you ain't ever gonna fly”. And of course, in 1968, the Beatles released Blackbird, which sounds like a response to Nina Simone: “Take these broken wings and learn to fly”.

During a radio interview, Pascale Tison talks with Sylvianne Hazard to trace the hypotheses of Paul McCartney's influences—Bach, India, birdsong, Angela Davis, and the African-American civil rights struggle—and concludes by stating that “everything can be true and right, and coexist...”

A labyrinthine creative approach can also be found in La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (The Most Secret Memory of Men), a world-book by 2021 Prix Goncourt winner Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, which deeply inspired me and dictated the title for this new piece dedicated to the musicians of the Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles and the entire team behind the scenes who have made this human adventure possible, rich, and necessary for 60 years now!