Last year, the Institut launched its first cultural season, “Encré” dans la culture, bringing together some of the brightest stars on the Genevan arts scene. We wanted to find out what those artists who took a leap of faith with us have been doing over the last twelve months; a quick catch-up shows they have not been idle.
All our collaborators – from Marc Perrenoud and Compagnie 7273 to visual artist Christian Gonzenbach and choir director Iris Thion-Poncet – have continued their artistic journeys in exciting ways.
We were thrilled to have the OSR, one of Geneva’s most iconic institutions, play the inaugural concert in our auditorium last March. It was a wonderful evening, featuring a programme curated by pianist Marc Perrenoud that paid tribute to the jazz composer Chick Corea, and the perfect way to introduce our new cultural venue to the Florimont community. Marc Perrenoud’s current projects are just as inspiring: he will be performing in a duo with trumpeter David Enhco on a tour taking him from Château Fallot in Lausanne on 20 December 2023 to Liechtenstein, Germany and France.
Compagnie 7273 will also be performing this month, on 6 December at Pully’s Octogone theatre, in a new piece called Fall in. Laurence Yadi and Nicolas Cantillon describe the path their artistic collaboration has taken them over their twenty years together. Dallying with the world of cabaret, they invent characters for themselves and perform some of the moments they have experienced as dancers and choreographers. Their work has seen them on stages outside Switzerland too: in November they appeared at the Kinani Festival in Maputo, Mozambique and in Windhoek, Namibia at the National Theatre of Namibia, performing their emblematic piece Nuit, which they shared with us at Institut Florimont last year.
Visual artist Christian Gonzenbach, whose residency was such a success with pupils last year, has been just as busy since then with an exhibition of his work at Eglise Saint François in Lausanne over several months. Asked in 2022 about his reasons for taking up the residency with the Institut, he talked about the importance of passing knowledge between generations, a value shared by the director of choral ensemble Entresilences, Iris Thion-Poncet.
She directed the ensemble in their French Etiquette programme in August, part of the summer concert season at Saint Germain. The repertoire consisted of sacred French choral music from the 20th and 21stcenturies imbued with characteristics from past eras.
The Contrechamps ensemble launched its new season; under the title “De Bleu !”, the rich programme invites the audience to “plunge into a series of lengthier works, portrait concerts or multiple compilations”.
