Variations

With the Fondation BNP Paribas, Le Lieu Unique—the centre for contemporary culture in Nantes — presents an adventurous festival of music for piano and keyboards: Variations.

From Tuesday 28 March to Sunday 9 April 2023, at Le Lieu Unique and in multiple venues in Nantes, some thirty concerts will showcase the wealth of creativity of contemporary, jazz, electronic, experimental, traditional, and pop music, and showcase the excitement of the mixing of different styles around a common element: the keyboard.

During Variations, the music is to be experienced in a multitude of ways: deep listening in reclining mode, solo concerts where the spectator is alone with a musician, talks, film screenings, live A/V, and club events. The festival strives to offer new, more introspective, even meditative formats while maintaining moments of exchange, celebration, and collective energy.

Faithful to its identity, this edition will include encounters with landmark figures of minimal music, notably Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and Carl Stone, with a particular tribute to the female pioneers, whether forgotten or not, of electronic music: Éliane Radigue, Pauline Oliveros, and Delia Derbyshire.
The festival also focuses on today’s women composers, with many female trailblazers from
all over the world in the 2023 programme (Marina Herlop, Claire Rousay, Puce Mary, Camilla Sparksss), providing further proof of the liberating power of technology and the place of women in musical innovation.

Another highlight of this 7th edition is the accepted, asserted, even magnified role of vernacular music
for leading emerging artists. From the cellist Okkyung Lee who returns to traditional Korean music to the powerful song of the Native American Joe Rainey, Yann Gourdon’s hurdy-gurdy, or the resistance songs of Italian workers revisited by Silvia Tarozzi and Deborah Walker, all of whom see their cultural and emotional heritage as an endless source of inspiration. 

** Full program to be released on February 7, 2023 **