Fabienne Séveillac and Gwenaëlle Rouger: "Difficulties putting it into practice” by Simon Steen Andersen: FAQ between performers and composers when approaching performative music

Fabienne Séveillac and Gwenaëlle Rouger present a talk on performance practices.

ABSTRACT

 "Instead of having music and something additional, I'm writing music that can also be visual. A visual music." - Simon Steen Andersen

Here, the music is an art work in which form and content merge, the performative aspect arriving as a physical and psychic extension of the musical gesture. With concrete examples from our experience of practicing "Difficulties putting it into practice," we will address issues of interpretation concerning the text, its meaning and the way it unfolds, as well as other questions about performing this piece. We will also discuss our interest as interpreters of switching our traditional "roles" as a singer and a pianist and eventually encourage an open discussion between performers and composers on these issues.

 
 

ABOUT FABIENNE SÉVEILLAC

Fabienne Séveillac returned to Paris in 2011 after having spent five years in New York where she obtained a Masters in Performance Voice at the Brooklyn College Conservatory. During her studies there she performed the lead role in L’enfant et les sortilèges, Arnalta in L’incoronazione di Poppea, Pierrot lunaire, and she premiered numerous pieces by young composers. In 2009 she was the recipient of the Robert Starr Award for the best interpretation of a living composer. She now devotes her time principally to the performance of 20th and 21st century music. 

After a Masters degree in Musicology focusing on György Kurtág and Samuel Beckett at the Tours University, whilst teaching piano and ear training, she began vocal studies in the ensemble Mikrokosmos then at the Centre de Formation pour Jeunes Chanteurs du Jeune Choeur de Paris at the Paris CRR, where she worked with Laurence Equilbey and other conductors such as John Nelson and Pierre Boulez. Among recent concerts, she has sung Einstein on the Beach by Philip Glass, directed and sang the East coast premiere of Aperghis’ Sextuor: L'origine des espèces in New York and Helmut Lachenmann’s temA in Montréal, Canada. She has performed solo and chamber music at festivals and artist residencies in France, England, Italy, Switzerland, the United States and Canada; among others, in New York, at Issue Project Room, Le Poisson Rouge, The Tank, Barbès, Secret Project Robot, Wild Project and Webster Hall. Also passionate about theater and contemporary dance, she had the chance to work with stage directors such as Claude Bushvald, Jeremy Bloom and more recently Luc Clementin in a political play by Frédéric Lordon, D’un retournement l’autre

Since her return to Paris she is also the singer and co-artistic director of soundinitiative, and has created the HYOID (contemporary voices) ensemble with Frauke Aulbert.  Recently she also performed as a solist at the Paris CRR with Mesostics, was invited by the ensemble Contrechamps in Geneva, premiered Santiago Diez Fischer's opera La Nuit Aveugle with Le Balcon and Jean-Pascal Chaigne’s cycle Mezza Voce with Les Musiciens du Parnasse, Berio with ensemble Insolitus and of course more concerts with soundinitiative and HYOID in various festivals including the Darmstadt Summer Festival, Sons d’automne in Annecy, What's Next in Brussels, Claviers en Pays d’Auch, Blurred Edges in Hamburg, and the Impuls Akademie in Graz.

www.fabienneseveillac.com

 

ABOUT GWENAËLLE ROUGER

Gwenaëlle Rouger, pianist, conceives the concert as a moment of experimentation, as much for the audience as for the performer; a time and space in which questions are expressed through engaging the senses. This explorative approach provides the creative impetus for the development of her performances, which bring together notated contemporary composition, improvisation, live electronics and installation (http://urgentstimulation.wordpress.com/2013/10/03/37/). 

Gwenaëlle completed her initial training in Paris and received her Diplome d'Etudes Musicales in 2005. Her interest in Contemporary music and its aesthetic discourse led her to pursue four years of further studies with the composer and pianist Carlos Roque Alsina. In order to pursue her research interests in greater depth, Rouger is currently undertaking a Masters degree in Contemporary music performance at the Royal College of Music in London. 

In 2008, Gwenaëlle was a finalist in the Xavier Montsalvatge International piano competition for contemporary music performance and since has played as a solist or as a chamber music member in a number of venues internationally,  including the Palace of Congress ( Girona, Spain), the Arsenal (Metz, France), the 104 (Paris, France), the Cadogan Hall, the Cafe Oto (London,UK). She particularly enjoys collaborating with young composers, which has resulted in her premiering many of their works.