SONGS OF THE HEART – A Baroque Music Concert
21st December, 2017 | 4 PM
NCPA EXPERIMENTAL THEATRE
Entry free and open to all!
Presented as a part of
BONJOUR INDIA 2017 – 18
Following the launch of Bonjour India - incubating dreams, ideas and projects which aim to move the partnership between India and France into the future, NCPA Experimental Theatre in collaboration with Prakriti Foundation, will host a Baroque Music Concert – SONGS OF THE HEART.
A mix of devotion and passion, of joy and tears, Songs of the Heart features music by French and Italian composers and texts by poets from the Renaissance and Baroque era in dialogue with jewels of Indian Poetry. Same lyrics celebrate both sacred and profane love in the Songs of Songs from the Bible, in musical settings by Palestrina or Monteverdi, or in Les Amours de Ronsard, music by Anthoine de Bertrand. We also find parallels in ancient Tamil Sangam Poetry, in devotional poems by Mirabaï or Rumi, that explore every facet of love.
Under the direction of Françoise Lasserre, Akadêmia has been active in India and training musicians here since 2013 through workshops, operas and concerts. For this production, five singers and two instrumentalists from France join 13 Indian singers and 2 Indian actors to bring these songs of the heart to the stage.
The Team
Conductor: Françoise Lasserre
Actors: Savrasti Banerjee and Varun Aiyer
Sopranos: Sparsh Bajpai, Nilima Buch, Harmonie Deschamps, Faye Monteiro, Shreya Nayak, Nikitha Venkatesh
Altos: Usha Aron, Jean-Christophe Clair, Gaythri Subramanian, Marilyn Thomas
Tenors: Prabhat Chandola, Jean Delescluse, Paco Garcia, Lijo K. Jose
Basses: Rahul Bharadwaj, Philippe Roche, Nimish Shah, Bhanu Sharma
Viola da gamba: Sylvia Abramowicz
Archlute: Marc Wolff
The concert took place in Chennai on 17th Dec and in Pune on the 19th
About Françoise Lasserre
Françoise Lasserre started Akadêmia in 1986, an ensemble that brings together professional singers and instrumentalists. She has performed in numerous concerts in France as well as abroad and has released 15 CDs with a repertoire ranging from Palestrina to Bach. In terms of aesthetics, she concentrates on authenticity through her choice of instruments and the number and types of voices. Her work has received many awards.
Along with her collaborators, she also dedicates herself to training young artists. Thus, between 2013 and 2015, with the support of the Institut Français in India she conducted workshops in Delhi for young singers; thanks to the co-production between Akadêmia and The Neemrana Music Foundation, these students performed in the opera Orfeo in Delhi and Paris and participated in Vivaldi concerts in India. Today, the work goes on with the support of local partners such as the Prakriti Foundation in Songs of the Heart.
About Prakriti Foundation:
Prakriti Foundation was founded in Chennai in 1998 to host events enquiring into our cultural heritage and inheritance. The vision behind Prakriti was to host events that would play a catalytic role in changing and enlarging the cultural scene in Chennai. Thus, Prakriti Foundation saw itself typically as the moving force behind events as diverse as music concerts, seminars and serious scholarly discourse, multi media events, experimental and protest cinema and theatre festivals. Apart from events across various performing and non-performing art forms, the foundation has been conducting eight major festivals, currently of which four are still ongoing along with one biennial awards for contemporary dance.
About Bonjour India:
The third edition of Bonjour India 2017-18 is a four-month-long mega voyage across India that will celebrate Indo-French partnership as well as shape the next decade of human exchange between the two countries. From November 2017 to February 2018, Bonjour India covers 100 projects in 33 cities across 20 states & union territories. Bonjour India provides a platform for enduring partnerships across the themes of Smart Citizen, High Mobility, Go Green.
Bonjour India is unprecedented given the ambitious scale of its partnership with India. People at the forefront of their fields will share their inspiring journeys as they change society through their innovation and creativity. At events collaboratively organised across cities and disciplines, amid performances, debates, seminars and exhibitions, all audiences will find something that captures their imagination.
With Bonjour India 2017-18, India and France will come together to create, innovate and partner towards a progressive and sustainable future.
Bonjour India aims far, Bonjour India supports fair, Bonjour India is fun!
Tag us at #BonjourIndia & #CommonThread
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For further information please visit www.bonjour-india.in
Making this larger-than-life platform come true, are our valued partner companies. Bonjour India thanks:
Diamond Partners: Dassault Aviation, Reliance
Gold Partners: Accor, Air India, Engie, Krishnakriti, Renault, Société Générale
Silver Partners: Air France, Ariane Space, Axa, Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation, BNP Paribas, Faurecia, Laurent Perrier, Mane, Naval Group, NRB Bearings Limited, Pernod Ricard, Phoenix Mall, Saint Gobain, Thales, Vicat (Bharathi Cement), Writer Relocations,
Event Partners: Schneider Electric, Sonalika Group, Suez, Apeejay Surrendra Group, L'Oreal, Champagne Besserat de Bellefon, Grover, L’Opera, Oberoi Group
Communication Partners: Foxity, ITSA, JC Decaux