le jardin en mouvement

For her melologue le jardin en mouvement, French composer Alexandra Grimal drew inspiration from the eponymous text by landscape architect Gilles Clément, taken from his book Où en est l’herbe (Actes Sud, 2006). A quest for new sound spaces in perpetual mutation, carried by Suliane Brahim’s sublime voice.

Gilles Clément’s thinking is revolutionary and visionary. His extraordinary life, and the singular choices he has always made in keeping with his values, make him an extraordinary, modest gardener. “Do as much as possible with, as little as possible against” sums up the position of the Jardin en Mouvement gardener. What if music were a medium that could highlight the invisible, sculpting in infinitely subtle ways the strengths of the musicians involved? This garden of sound in motion is a search, a wasteland towards new spaces of thought and links between beings. Through their sounds, the musicians are species that move from one place to another, that expand. This piece seeks to integrate the author’s ideas into the musical construction. Nature is no longer a concept, but the main entity to which we are attentive, like benevolent hosts. The garden is not a place of power, of man’s domination over the elements, but on the contrary, a path of learning led by the living.

The genre of the melologue (a piece combining music and the narrator’s voice) highlights the relationship between music, literature and the visual arts, and makes it possible to bring together and federate a wide range of disciplines: music, literature, foreign languages, visual arts, history and geography, science, physical education and sport, etc.