“En Silence” (Japanese premiere)

Film after film, Alexandre Desplat develops his incomparable art to produce a musical identity for movies as different as Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet, Peter Webber’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, Stephen Frears’ The Queen, Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer, Morten Tyldum’s The Imitation Game, Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech, David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, David Yates’ Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken, Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty or George Clooney’s Ides of March.
An extremely prolific musician, he enjoys the challenge of writing music that complements, essentializes, and provides a dimension to the worlds created on the silver screen. His musical eclecticism, inherited from his Greek mother, French father, study of the classical European tradition and of African and Brazilian traditions, allows him to organically mix the disparate languages of music. His encounter with the violinist Solrey marked the beginning of a long collaboration; together, they have created a new methodology for use of strings in film music. This uncanny sense of instrumentation transports audiences to a marvel of diverse places and times – from the magical Europe of Harry Potter to the 21st century oil fields of Syriana; from the epic space opera of Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets to the 17th century studio of Jan Vermeer, in Girl with a Pearl Earring. His writing pivots deftly between otherworldly fantasy, high drama, and historical suspense.
Two time Academy Award winner for his soundtracks to Guillermo del Toro’s Shape of Water and Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, and nine times an Academy Award nominee, Alexandre Desplat has already won two Golden Globes, two Grammy Awards, three Baftas, three Cesars and numerous other distinctions. He has become one of the most brilliant composers of his generation.

United Instruments of Lucilin is a contemporary music ensemble based in Luxembourg, dedicated to the promotion and creation of 20th-century and 21st-century music. Centering on a string quartet, pianist, and percussionist, it adds wind instruments and other instruments according to the scale of the project. It works with composers, scholars, and performers to develop various fields of contemporary music. It visited Japan in October 2014, premiering Toshio Hosokawa’s “The Raven: Monodrame pour mezzo-soprano et ensemble de 12 musiciens” in a concert version. This was recorded at a performance in Hiroshima and released on CD by Naxos, which was selected as a record of the month by Record Geijutsu magazine. Examples of its work includes a tour in Japan of the children’s piece “Tulles et les Ombres,” a revival of Hosokawa’s “The Raven,” performing music for the world premiere and revival of Philippe Manoury’s “Kein Licht,” and the Luxembourg premiere of Pascal Dusapin’s children’s piece “Momo.” In this way, its activities extend beyond regular music concerts to encompass also performances for children.