For the 2023 edition of INTONAL Festival in Malmö, the Sound Environment Centre, Inter Arts Center and the Division of Musicology at Lunds University collaborate on a concert presenting the electroacoutic music piece L'île resonante by Éliane Radigue, diffused by François J. Bonnet, composer and artistic director of the GRM - Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris. ln addition to the concert, Bonnet will hold a seminar about the history of the GRM and the particularities of early electroacoustic. He will also take part of an artist talk together with PhD candidate Katja Heldt. On top of this, there will be a screening of “Echos”, a sensitive portrait of Éliane Radigue based on intimacy and friendship.

French composer Éliane Radigue is one of the most known female pioneers of electronic music. Born in Paris in 1932 - where she lives until today - she started already in the early 1950s to work with French pioneers Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995) and Pierre Henry (1927-2017) and their "musique concrète" which she developed to her own musical electronical style. The French INA's Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris has been practicing creativity and research in the field of sound and electro-acoustic music for more than ó0 years. The only laboratory of its kind in the world for experimenting with sound, the GRM was incorporated into the INA in 1975 and has contributed ever since to its mission to preserve and enhance sound heritage.

Radigue's music is subtle and calm, and draws on a profound compositional complexity of a continuous, ever-changing yet extremely slow stream of sound, whose transformation occurs within the sonic material itself. The music invites for at deep and concentrated mode of listening, which, with the complex challenges the world is facing for the moment being, should be more welcomed than ever.

The piece L'île resonante from 2000, features the instrument Radigue has worked with since the early 1970's, the ARP 2500 modular synthesizer and her medium of choice, analog multitrack tape. The piece is characteristic of her work as it is a tapestry of long, gradually evolving drones created with oscillators on the ARP synthesizer and with tape loops. ln 2000, the piece was awarded the Golden Nica at the Ars Electronica Festival.

L'île resonante is Radigue's last electronic composition before shifting her musical scope and focusing her compositions on acoustic instruments and musicians. The piece will be performed / diffused by composer and sound engineer François J. Bonnet, as Radigue herself will not be able to travel. Bonnet will diffuse Radigue's electronic work as part of the festivals acousmatic program in a setup of 34 loudspeakers grouped around the audience.

Friday, April 28

15:15 — 17:00 Seminar at LUX: B251, Lund 
with François J. Bonnet. "From musique concrète to music to come"

Saturday, April 29

16:00 Artist Talk at Inter Arts Center, Malmö.  Location: Black Room
with François J. Bonnet and Katja Heldt about Éliane Radigue

18:00 Screening at Inter Arts Center, Malmö. Location: Black Room
Echos (2021), a film by Eléonore Huisse and François J. Bonnet. A sensitive portrait of Éliane Radigue based on intimacy and friendship. 

23:00 Concert at Inter Arts Center, Malmö. Location: Red Room
François J. Bonnet plays Éliane Radigue – L'île resonante

François J. Bonnet is a Franco-Swiss composer and electroacoustic musician based in Paris. In addition to being the Director of INA GRM (Institut national de l’audiovisuel / Groupe de Recherches Musicales - the latter being one of the birthplaces of electroacoustic experimentation in the late 1950’s), François J. Bonnet is also a writer and theoretician.He has written the books “The Order of Sounds: A Sonorous Archipelago”, “The Infra-World”, and "After Death”. He is also the author of the manifesto “The Music to Come”, published by Shelter Press in 2020, and the co-editor of the “SPECTRES” series of publications, a joint project of INA GRM and Shelter Press. As a musician, Bonnet often works under the project name Kassel Jaeger. He has collaborated with artists such as Oren Ambarchi, Giuseppe Ielasi, Stephan Mathieu, Stephen O’Malley, Jim O’Rourke, Akira Rabelais, James Rushford and Gisèle Vienne. Kassel Jaeger’s works are a complex balance between concrète experimentalism, ambient noise, and electroacoustic improvisation. He has released several albums on various labels such as Shelter Press, Black Truffle, Editions Mego and Senufo Editions. While his own music has been played in renowned venues and festivals all over the world, François J. Bonnet has been working closely with groundbreaking composer and electronic music pioneer Eliane Radigue, and has performed her electronic music regularly in concert. 

The whole programme is curated by Katja Heldt, PhD candidate in Musicology who writes her dissertation on female pioneers for electronic music.