A Sentimental landscape | 2024
"Choreographer and performer Alban Richard and composer and instrumentalist Florentin Ginot have embarked on a collaboration in the fullest sense of the word, co-authoring a piece that will bring them together on stage. Borrowing its title from the novel A Sentimental Journey by writer Laurence Sterne, where «sentimental» means resistance to the supremacy of reason, A Sentimental Landscape plays on the loss of landmarks within a sound cartography. The duo’s research focuses on an intense musical composition, a polyphony of voices (spoken, whispered) that activates and triggers movements, sounds, affects and emotions. In this shifting soundscape, double bass motifs, machine rhythms and loops leave no respite for the performers’ bodies. The piece creates and modulates an island of gestures, words and sounds, around which the audience takes place." Vincent Théval
Co-written by composer and instrumentalist Florentin Ginot and choreographer and performer Alban Richard, A Sentimental Landscape is an intense musical composition built around the textual, physical and instrumental production of the performers. The piece foregrounds the polyphony of spoken and breathed voices, triggering movements, sounds, affects and emotions. A landscape-state of mind is established in the space delimited by the surrounding audience.
The musical composition projects a perpetually shifting, changing, diffuse sound image, where notions of coexistence and multidirectional arrangement take part in the dramaturgical development. Double bass patterns mingle with the perpetual drive of autonomous sound machines. Granulation and warping segment loops whose energy leaves no respite for the performers’ bodies.
Prisoners of intertwined temporalities, the bodies endure Paul Éluard’s harsh desire to endure: «Nous sommes corps à corps nous sommes terre à terre Nous naissons de partout nous sommes sans limites» («Our bodies are against each other, we are down to earth. We are born from everywhere, we are without limits»).
In an unstable lighting environment, this musical, textual and corporeal magma, augmented by electronic transformations and relic sounds, invites spectators to change their bearings and explore this sentimental landscape.
Inspired by Anna Tsing’s theories on the polyphony of life, A Sentimental Landscape builds and modulates an island of gesture, word and sound: spectator-listeners take their places around this island-shaped space, where the two performers move incessantly.
This autonomous island is sometimes set up in a theater, a museum or a gymnasium, and often in an underground parking lot or in the heart of a century-old forest.
Production | centre chorégraphique national de Caen in Normandie and HowNow |
Composition, stage design, performance | Florentin Ginot |
Choreography, stage design, performance | Alban Richard |
Lighting design | Jérôme Houlès |
Sound design | Martin Antiphon |
Assistant | Max Fossati |
Administration | Silvina Senn |
Acquisition | Les Indépendances |
HOWNOW IS SUPPORTED BY DRAC ILE-DE-FRANCE. A SENTIMENTAL LANDSCAPE WAS CREATED AS PART OF FLORENTIN GINOT’S DGCA-SACEM ASSOCIATE COMPOSER PROGRAM AT THE CENTRE CHORÉGRAPHIQUE NATIONAL DE CAEN EN NORMANDIE
All projects
Booking France : Cleo Michiels
cleo@lequipage-prod.com
+33 6 35 48 43 25
For other enquiries, please contact Florentin directly : contact@florentinginot.com
Florentin Ginot is dedicated to pushing the boundaries of his art, not only as a remarkable soloist and a leading interpreter of contemporary music, but also in pioneering collaborations with artists across genres and disciplines.
Praised as “charismatic” (Le Figaro), a “breathtaking virtuoso” (Diapason) and “a name to remember” (Le Monde), the double bassist has established himself both as a soloist and with Ensemble Musikfabrik, of which he has been a member since 2015.
He has established a new repertoire for his instrument through close collaborations with composers such as Georges Aperghis, György Kurtág, Rebecca Saunders and Helmut Lachenmann. He has appeared as a soloist at venues including the Berlin Philharmonie, Kölner Philharmonie, Cité de la Musique in Paris and L’Auditori Barcelona as well as part of the Berliner Festspiele, Festival Présences and Manifeste Festival in Paris, Festival Musica in Strasbourg, Sacrum Profanum in Kraków, Ultima Oslo and La Biennale di Venezia.
Since 2019, Florentin Ginot has instigated a series of collaborations with artists from diverse traditions to look beyond genre boundaries and create hybrid projects between contemporary music, electronic music and world traditions including producer Helge Sten aka Deathprod, composer Stefan Prins, Palestinian songwriter Kamilya Jubran and actress Valérie Dréville.
With his first solo album, Bach - Biber, released in 2022 on NoMadMusic, Florentin Ginot brings his unique genre-busting perspective to classics of baroque repertoire, arranging solos and sonatas by Bach and Biber for double bass and synthesizer. France Musique praised the album as “absolutely stunning”, adding that “his adaptation of Bach’s chaconne for violin leaves us speechless”.
The 2023-24 season includes his solo debut at the Philharmonie de Paris, with a live presentation of his Bach - Biber project, as well as performances at Jazzdor Strasbourg and the Festival St-Denis. He will present the world premiere of a new solo piece by Clara Iannotta in Florence and Cologne, as well as appearing in duo with electric guitarist Yaron Deutsch.
Increasingly active as a multi-instrumentalist and composer, Florentin Ginot will also present his compositional debut Disturbance, combining modular analogue synthesizers with traditional instruments. The full-length work will be developed during a residency at the AIR programme in Krems, Austria and premiered in March 2024 at the Théâtre de la Cité internationale in Paris. From 2023-2025 he will be associate composer at the National Choreographic Centre of Caen.
Florentin Ginot graduated from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris, and was a Laureate of the Banque Populaire Foundation and Mécénat Musical Société Générale. In 2020 he was named "Music revelation of the year" by the Arts Journalists Syndicate. He is also the founder of HowNow, a production company developing staged presentations combining contemporary music with dance, theatre and circus.
HowNow is an artistic company, designing shows and scenic concerts, alongside dance, theater and circus. HowNow was founded by Florentin Ginot in 2017.
When posed the question: "What could a Musikfabrik be?", a clever primary school child answered: "That is where they create music that hasn’t been made yet". That basically sums up everything in a nutshell.
“ Florentin is absolutely stunning, and his adaptation of Bach's chaconne for violin leaves us speechless.
What a prodigious musician! ”
—FRANCE MUSIQUE, Corinne Schneider
“ Florentin Ginot is constantly experimenting with the renewal of his solo repertoire. Through Bach and Biber, he reinvents the Baroque classics with art and manner, taking the double bass to new heights. ”
—L’ALSACE, Disque du jour
“ Perhaps the most beautiful CD of the past year, in which Florentin Ginot's sublime double bass gives a surprising new dimension to the masterpieces of Bach and Biber. ”
“ This CD is one of those that intrigues at first, and transforms the improbable into the obvious. We thank Florentin Ginot and his two partners for this unexpected demonstration, with the soles of the wind.”
“ Florentin Ginot, charismatic ”
“ Initiated almost anonymously, his double bass solo (Ombres Portées, world premiere) imposes itself in a chalouped dimension which, from the noisy rattle to the jazzy riff, owes a lot to the impressive commitment of Florentin Ginot (23 years old, a name to remember). ”
"If it were necessary to illustrate the benefits of a close collaboration between a composer and a performer, it is Daniel D'Adamo's Ombres portées which, for this edition of Présences, would be the best example. The young bassist Florentin Ginot is not only a breathtaking virtuoso, but he also plays by heart a dozen minutes of music that he knows in every detail for having contributed to it, and in which he throws himself body and soul - so that he appears on stage in a state of absolute serenity. ”
"Impressive on an instrument whose composer emphasizes the full range of the spectrum, including the fragile and microtonal trebles, Florentin Ginot leads the process with a raging and supple gesture, especially when he tames his low string with its sensual and deep foliage. ”
"The dreamlike sensitive plucked double bass by Florentin Ginot. ”
"A breathtaking interpretation of Berio's Sequenza XIVb"
"Luciano Berio's Sequenza XIVb - which allows us to estimate the full extent of Florentin Ginot's talent"