Music for life and dignity

Launched at the initiative of the musician Jordi Savall, ambassador of the European Union for intercultural dialogue in 2008 and “Artist for Peace”, chosen by UNESCO, the Orpheus XXI project aims to enable the integration of professional refugee musicians and to transmit their culture to uprooted children and adolescents.

From November 2016 to October 2018, and throughout Europe, around twenty refugee musicians provide musical education to around a hundred young people and children refugees and Europeans. Together, and for more than a year, they work on a repertoire of oral tradition music, vocal and/or instrumental, from their country of origin.

Links between Jordi Savall and the Festival de Saint-Denis exist in particular since the concert Les Routes de l’esclavage, given in June 2015 in the Basilica.

This is why, in October 2017, the Saline Royale d’Arc et Senans, the project leader, asked the Festival de Saint-Denis to set up an orchestra of young musicians as part of the Orpheus XXI project.

The Saint-Denis Festival called on the Saint-Denis branch Les Restos du Coeur to mobilize volunteer children to participate in this project. The musicians Waed Bouhassoun (Syrian musician, star artist of the 2016 edition of the Métis Festival*), Neset Kutas, Kurdish percussionist, Bachar Al Dghlawi, Syrian percussionist, and Azmari Nirjhar, Bangladeshi singer, have been supervising the children every Friday from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Saint-Denis Conservatory since January 2018.

The first meeting between the musicians and the children took place in October 2017. They were auditioned on vocal and body rhythm exercises, but also on singing. Since January, there have been 15 children, aged 8 to 12, who meet every week for this workshop.

The Saint-Denis Festival wanted to extend this project to a cultural tour, bringing together the families of the young musicians outside of rehearsal hours. Thus, they are invited to visit the Basilica of Saint-Denis as a family and to continue the discovery with a CMN workshop.

They also attend the dress rehearsal of the Mozart concert, on Wednesday, June 13 at 7 p.m. in the Basilica of Saint-Denis, and are prepared in advance by a musician from the Festival.

The children and professional musicians meet together on stage and with Jordi Savall for a public restitution at the Museum of Art and History on Wednesday, June 20 at 4:30 p.m., World Refugee Day. Other youth orchestras offer their concert on the same day, all over Europe.

Excerpt from the Orpheus XXI concert with the young Dionysians, as part of the Besançon International Music Festival.

September 2018