Musicatreize Ensemble
Direction Roland Hayrabedian
Michel Petrossian Music
Film Artavazd Péléchian
Scenography Toni Casalonga

“No one had realised that humanity (…) had reached the stage where anyone excluded from one of its closed communities (…) was simultaneously excluded from the family of nations”. Hannah Arendt, Imperialism (Tome II of The Origins of Totalitarianism), page 276 (translated from the French edition, Le Seuil, Paris, 1982). In commemoration of the Armenian genocide, whose recognition is still the object of political and diplomatic struggles, Musicatreize took inspiration from the film The Seasons (1975) by Soviet (then Russian) director Artavazd Pelechian, considered a master of film montage. His 35-minute silent film pays poetic tribute to rural Armenia, following farmers through the seasons, from spring flooding to winter migration of cattle. The French-Armenian composer Michel Petrossian was commissioned to write a prelude and a postlude for twelve voices a cappella, musically framing the film’s themes while leaving its emotive force intact. A tribute to the “Lost Paradise” of those 800,000 exiles scattered throughout the world a hundred years ago.

 

Order by MUSICATREIZE
With the help of the Voce Cultural Centre – Centre of musical creation of Pigna (High Corsica)

13 July 2015 – Darius Milhaud Conservatoire Auditorium, Aix-en-Provence International Festival of Lyric Art
13 November 2015 – Saint-Victor abbey / Marseilles
5 November 2016 – St Ignacius of Antioch, New York / USA
7 November 2016 – Musicatreize Hall, Marseilles
11 December 2016 – Colonne Hall, Paris
19 October 2018 – Le Méjan, Arles