Not Here is a staged concert, with an in situ scenography.

Premiere : Köln Philharmonie (Acht Brücken Festival)
May 02nd 2018

Manifeste Festival (IRCAM)
June 06th 2018

Biennale di Venezia
September 29th 2018

The program proposes four premieres for solo Double bass, worked out especially for the format of this installation by Georges Aperghis, Liza Lim, Sebastian Rivas and Frédéric Pattar, includes musics by Rebecca Saunders, and new adaptations by Helmut Lachenmann and György Kurtág.

“The instrument is released from the role-register assigned by tradition and becomes a highly articulated space that contains at least two fundamental polarities.” (Pierluigi Billone)

The scenic installation is based on square platforms at different height, which diffuse a white light through all the surface of their floor. Through a low-angle illumination on the four Double basses, the modules create and draw shadows plays that structure the space by creating “floating” points. The Double bass player evolves on the platforms that are spread out in the space, on which four different instruments from piccolo Double bass to the five strings are placed, suggesting the moving musics by Lachenmann, Lim, Aperghis…

The project has an evolutive format opened to the partner’s places. Each version is imagined in situ with the local interlocutors. Through the modules distributed into space -each one integrating a different Double bass- the scenography engages with the characteristics of a given environment by using and transforming the structure and architecture of the site.

The audience installation can be in a traditional frontal setup, public that can also mingle with modules spread over a large area in the case of a more unusual place or not equipped for the show. The modules are fully self-sustained in lights and sound, no light support is needed.

From differentiated musical backgrounds, the compositions come together into this space with four faces for a poetic song of the deepest, of the resistance of strings and the struggle with the instrument.

Each premiere for solo Double bass is composed for one of the four instruments, and exploits their specificities and unique tuning –Scordatura.


Not Here | Trailer
02 Mai 2018
Kölner Philharmonie – Acht Brücken Festival


Conception & performance • Florentin Ginot

Stage design, construction • Olivier Defrocourt

Light design • Marie-Hélène Pinon

Sound design • Martin Antiphon

 

A HowNow production, supported by IMPULS Neue Musik, Institut Français, in coproduction with Acht Brücken Festival (KölnMusik)