La Forge
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A look back at the latest Haïkus produced by La Forge. Chien Lune, Encre Rouge, Kitchen… but also some great projects with Novi Koreni and Novo Quartet. We invite you behind the scenes!
Chien Lune
Encre Rouge
Kitchen
Chien Lune
Chien Lune: literal translation of Moondog, a reference to the American composer Louis Thomas Hardin (1916-1999), known as Moondog.
A trio made up of Elvire Jouve (drums, synthesizer, metallophone), Damien Sabatier (saxophones, shruti, Jew’s harp, bird calls, etc.) and Pascal Berne (double bass, arrangements, compositions).
Kitchen
Richard Bonnet (guitars) and Michel Mandel (clarinets) have created an acoustic duo with an original repertoire and chiselled compositions.
Free, intuitive music, KITCHEN knows no boundaries, no preconceptions. It’s a unique encounter between an earthy bluesman like Robert Johnson, who can take improvisation to the extreme, and a classical musician equally fascinated by Stravinsky, Eric Dolphy and repetitive music.
The album is due for release on 8 March 2024!
Encre Rouge
This original project is an exploration of music and words. Richard Bonnet and François Raulin have created original compositions inspired by Japanese haikus, short poems that recount an event or feeling in a few words.
Mike Ladd, a powerful and sensitive poet/rapper, improvises his lyrics and flow live on stage. Bruno Chevillon and Tom Rainey‘s powerful rhythm section adds its own essential stone to the edifice that has been imagined.
Novo Quartet
NOVO Quartet was born in 2005 out of the desire of Pascal Berne, double bass player, composer and arranger, to found an acoustic group with the aim of chiselling out his writing for the musicians who make up the group, following in the footsteps of Duke Ellington, Carla Bley and Luciano Berio.
Fifteen years on, the desire and pleasure of playing together remain intact. By turns daring chamber quartet, robust brass band, contemporary minimal orchestra on the edge or small orphéon: NOVO is unclassifiable.
No boundaries, no aesthetic divides, no posturing – just free NOVO music!
Novi Koreni (Nouvelles racines)
It seems to us that, at the heart of the meeting, we need to imagine today’s transcultural Europe in our own way. And make these traditions heard in a different way, by making them our own with the contribution of our respective backgrounds.
For us, this starts in Bulgaria, with 2 residencies in Sofia for Christophe Monniot (April 2022) and François Raulin (September 2022) with Ilia Mihaylov and the Choir. It’s the same idea that’s driving us to compose a new repertoire with all the range that jazz and 21st century music allow us to invent, through composition and improvisation.
Highlights!
We couldn’t forget the large-scale projects with their distinctive universes! Et Autres Chants d’Oiseaux, Alice Oratorio and Pharaonique Moondog!
Et Autres Chants d’Oiseaux
Alice Oratorio
Pharaonique Moondog