The 33e edition of the Dinard Festival, directed with conviction by pianist Claire-Marie Le Guay, who has plenty of projects in her pocket, was launched with fanfare on July 13 with an impressive recital by the star of percussion, Adélaïde Ferrière. She conquered that evening an audience who enthusiastically discovered this polymorphic instrument around adaptations for marimba by Rameau, Paganini, Debussy or Gershwin performed with sensitivity by the percussionist. Adélaïde Ferrière had also shown two great works, one for snare drum, Asventurus by Alexej Gerassimez, the other for skins, Rebonds B de Xenakis.
A stunning virtuoso
Revealed to the general public in 2017 by a Victory of Music, Adélaïde Ferrière is at 25 a stunning virtuoso. “This instrument is certainly popular, she remarks, little classical music connotation, which only really integrated it into the XXe century. He then gradually became a soloist and then a chamber musician. » The musician plays the worst acrobatics with such ease that she seems to have been born with chopsticks in hand. Space, time, rhythm, musicality, fluidity form with her a whole that borders on natural talent, making her forget her seven hours of daily work!
To those who ask her if the fact of being a woman is not a handicap in taming this very physical instrument, she likes to recall that many of the ensembles formed include women, and that the first solo percussionist is the Scottish virtuoso , Lady Evelyn Glennie. ” In Japan, Adélaïde Ferrière insists, the culture of the marimba is feminine. »
Close links with composers
She started at 8 years old piano and percussion, with the xylophone and the snare drum. “My father is a percussionist, my mother a pianist. Dancing, the choreographic gesture of percussion appealed to me as much as the infinite variety of sound,” she says. And like “every object has percussive properties, my musical pleasure is immense, with a color chart worthy of string instruments! ». However, he had been advised not to “neither piano, because there are too many people, nor percussion, because there is no one…”, she remembers, amused. Adélaïde Ferrière also welcomes a master asset of her instrument: “It’s about creation, the center of my activity which allows me to maintain close ties with composers. »
The 80 annual solo recitals which lead her to all audiences (she likes to introduce the marimba even in hospitals and nursing homes), not being enough for her, she assiduously practices ensemble music with the Trios KDM and Xenakis, which she founded, while performing in duos with artists such as pianists Fanny Azzuro and Bertrand Chamayou, violinist Renaud Capuçon, trumpeter David Guerrier…