We last saw Olivier Mellano’s work on voices in 2018, with Baum Ici-bas, a sumptuous contemporary and pop interpretation of Gabriel Fauré’s Mélodies. He was already thinking about the encounter to come, in 2021, with Gildas Pungier and his singers from the Mélisme(s) chamber choir, for whom he composed the eight pieces of ÉON. The word means “being” and “life” in Greek, or, for the composer, the ethereal and spiritual world of ideas – the space outside of time from where artists draw their inspiration.

The composition is pure and tonal, mixing serious music (and the harmonic worlds of Gesualdo, Purcell, Ligeti, Pärt, etc.) and contemporary inspiration, constantly modulating and weaving between harmony and dissonance, rhythmic trance and solar meditation, vibrating experience and contemplative moments. The wide variety of repertoires it has worked on over nearly twenty years (including classical, popular, traditional and contemporary music) means that the Mélisme(s) ensemble is used to versatile encounters and experiences that are off the beaten track. For this performance, the work of the choir’s leader and artistic director, Gildas Pungier, sits perfectly at the meeting point between cultures, in this unique encounter with a composer who combines traditional and Baroque music with a contemporary aesthetic. In the second half of the programme, Melaine Dalibert and Olivier Mellano will take to the stage of the Chapelle Saint-Vincent, which is hosting the concert, for an improvised organ and electric guitar duet created specially for the occasion, drawing out other colours of ÉON’s harmonic world.

With the mutual trust, care and artistic bond that unite these different artists, ÉON is a bright and subtle performance that highlights the dazzling vibrant voices through unexpected dialogue overflowing with sparkling energy and pure emotion.