As part of its residency at the Fondation des États-Unis, Ensemble Calliopée offers music outreach sessions designed for school audiences or hospitalized persons. These sessions involve Karine Lethiec, violist and artistic director of Ensemble Calliopée, who has extensive teaching experience, both as an advisor and viola teacher at the Conservatoire du 8e arrondissement de Paris, and as a speaker for awareness-raising activities she conducts outside teaching institutions. She is accompanied by talented young musicians: violinist Bilal Alnemr, student of the Festival Academy of Ensemble Calliopée, violist Jossalyn Jensen and cellist Sarah Ghandour, both residents at the FEU and Harriet Hale Woolley Fellows.
Together, they have developed a musical program “autour des cordes” (about strings), moving from duet to trio and quartet in a variety of timbre associations, highlighting the different tessitura of the
instruments. This program also has the particularity of being played together in a spirit of intergenerational exchange and professionalization of young musicians through sharing and active experience. It is constructed with short excerpts from “accessible” European and American works from the 19th to the 21st century, testifying to the links between Europe and the United States.
The “music outreach sessions” are conceived by Karine Lethiec as a narrative, a “journey” where participants follow the history of the works performed through a presentation adapted to the historic context and the lives of composers. This awareness of the link between a creator and his or her work thus allows us to “get closer” to the musical repertoire and to recall the vital force of music, in spite of the most turbulent historical contexts. At the same time, a presentation of the instruments by each of the musicians highlights the characteristics of the instruments: string family, their history, their manufacture, their timbres but also the playing techniques.
These “music outreach sessions” are also an opportunity for an exchange between the musicians and the participants, who are able to interact at the end of the session. A powerful vector accessible to all, music has the gift of making everyone’s sensitivity resonate, of giving birth to emotions, capable of leading to listening and comfort, to meeting and sharing.
Photos available on Facebook.
Music Outreach for School Audiences
Tuesday, May 15th, 9:30am to 11:30am, at the Fondation des États-Unis
In partnership with the Académie de Paris
Music Outreach for Hospitalized Persons
Tuesday, June 19th, 3pm to 5pm, at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital / Marguerite Bottard pavillion entertainment room
In partnership with the Centre Inter-Médiathèques / CFDC / AP-HP (coordination of the network of media libraries)
Program « Autour des cordes »
Antonín DVOŘÁK / A Czech in New York
Terzetto for violin and two violas
Scherzo
Ernst Van DOHNÁNYI / A Hungarian in Florida
Sérénade for string trio
Theme and Variations
Béla BARTÓK / A Hungarian in New York
Duet for two violas
Pablo CASALS / A Spaniard in Puerto Rico
Le Chant des oiseaux (arangement by David Walter for cello, violin and two violas)
Andrew NORMAN / An American in Rome (professor at the University of Los Angeles)
Companion guide to Rome for string trio (excerpt)
Darius MILHAUD / A Frenchman in California
Sonatine for string trio, opus 221b (1940)
III. Animé
Rebecca CLARKE / A Brit in New York
Grotesque for viola and cello
James Reese EUROPE / An African-Americain from New York at Carnegie Hall
The Castle Doggy Foxtrot (arangement by David Walter for string trio)
Igor STRAVINSKY / A Russian in the USA
Tango for string quartet
Musicians
Karine Lethiec, viola and artistic direction
Bilal Alnemr, violin – student at the Festival Academy of Ensemble Calliopée
Jossalyn Jensen, viola – resident at the Fondation des États-Unis and Harriet Hale Woolley scholar
Sarah Ghandour, cello – resident at the Fondation des États-Unis and Harriet Hale Woolley scholar