2023-08-19 07:28:04
The time of its festival dedicated to the glorious child of the country, the composer Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), La Côte-Saint-André puts itself in the “fantastic” tune of its hero. From his birthplace to the village church, from the magnificent market hall to the chapel of the Fondation des Apprentis d’Auteuil, without forgetting of course the courtyard of the Louis XI castle, the heart of the event, music is everywhere! But also dance or the visual arts, the latter being particularly honored this year thanks to Zad Moultaka.
Indeed, the composer and visual artist born in 1967 in Lebanon presents three chapters of his protean work, in three distinct places. With the red thread, the theme chosen for the 2023 edition by Bruno Messina, director of the festival: the myth.
Upward motion, downward motion
If there is one known to all, it is that of Sisyphus, condemned to eternally push a stone to the top of a mountain from where it always ends up falling. Defying the gods is never without risk… “This is the third and final part of a triptych combining music and video, begun in Brittany, extended to Beirut and which will end on August 26 at the Carmelite convent of Beauvoir-en-Royans, near La Side, explains Zad Moultaka. I worked on the Deluge by transposing it in the form of a great fall of contemporary images and sounds, echoing our era assailed by information and noise. »
Ejecta, a creation by Zad Moultaka presented on the occasion of the reopening of the Sursock museum in Beirut, in May 2023. / Walid Rashid / Sursock Museum
At the Domaine de Kerguéhennec, the images spread from top to bottom: at the Sursock Museum in Beirut, they explode upwards like a volcano. “The last part is the synthesis, in a double ascending and descending movement, as in the myth of Sisyphus”, pursues its creator. A pessimistic view of the world? Zad Moultaka denies it: “Neither pessimism nor hope, but rather a dynamic, like that of the wheel, which allows you to stand up and move forward. »
An unexpected vision of Hercules and his labors
The musical dimension of Sisyphus is honored by the Musicatreize vocal ensemble directed by Roland Hayrabedian, the composer’s faithful accomplice. The same artists are also the linchpin ofHercule“opera-ritual” expected on August 28 in the chapel of the Fondation des Apprentis d’Auteuil.
The libretto was written by Bruno Messina, “in a constant exchange around this heroic figure and the famous extraordinary works of which he triumphed”, continues Zad Moultaka. With six singers on stage and six others on screen in a permanent shift from one to the other, the show focuses on “questioning the myth, assuming a certain radicality, no doubt surprising”assures the composer… who will say no more to spare the surprise.
Imagining paleolithic sounds
The media library welcomes the third time of the artist’s presence at the festival, in an equally original form. “This visual and sound project was born from my visit to the Chauvet cave which deeply impressed me, he says. I dived into it with fascination. But of music, no trace. What was she then? So I imagined a poetic and completely fictional game to evoke its unknown memory…”
Thus, Zad Moultaka invented musical inscriptions, a vast fresco in the form of a score 36,000 years old. He added seven equally imaginary instruments and, completing this tribute to the music of his distant predecessors, created seven sonorities corresponding to these instruments: loudspeakers broadcast them simultaneously, as one hears the various music stands of an orchestra.
Although he admits that he has not had very close ties with the work of Hector Berlioz up to now, this attachment to myths and this interest in the most unexpected sounds and instruments bring Zad Moultaka closer to the irreducible Hector . “I haven’t really gone into it yet, but it’s true that with each new encounter with Berlioz, I feel new affinities…”
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