Born in 2006, the Odyssée de
la Harpe festival stands out from the crowd, because it is entirely dedicated to the blue harp! It was the passion and determination of Ghislaine Petit-Volta which sparked the project off. Ghislaine is professor at the Conservatoire de Sceaux in Bourg-La-Reine, France, and she convinced conservatoire director Jean-Luc Touret to buy a blue harp, and create a special class to study it. Once the instrument arrived at the conservatoire, Ghislaine was faced with the challenge of finding music for it - and for all levels, from beginners to more advanced students. This need for repertoire was not only an urgent one if the blue harp class at the CDS was to survive, but was also vital for the durability of the instrument itself. On February 4th, 2005, in the Stravinsky Hall at the IRCAM (the institut de recherche et coordination acoustique / musique), Jakez François joined forces with Ghislaine and Jean-Luc. They presented the blue harp, how it works and and its possibilities to a large audience of student composers, and engineers from the IRCAM. Alain Louvier was there, as was Trio Controverse harpist Martine Flaissier. They also shared their experience of the creative collaboration between performer and composer for this instrument as yet still unknown to many composers. The presentation day finished with a call by Jean-Luc Touret to the composers present to discover the blue harp and to compose not only concert works for it, but also study and exam pieces. He strongly encouraged them to contact him directly, and join him in his mission to commission and create a repertoire for the blue harp. You can see that his mission has endured beyond his initial proposal: the first Odyssée de la Harpe festival was born the following year, in March 2006.
Much more than a simple festival, the Odyssée is a veritable musical event where originality focuses on the blue harp and its repertoire, students, teachers, composers and harpmaker. The students perform their year's work, the composers come onto the stage to explain their pieces and the inspiration and work behind them, and the harpmaker - in this case, Jakez
François for Camac Harps - provides technical support and displays his newest inventions. It was precisely at the Odyssée de la Harpe 2006 that he presented one of the MIDI harp's first prototypes. In addition to concerts which have featured world premieres of pieces by, among others, Christophe Coudenhove, Alexandre Lévy, Jan Vandenheerde, Marie-Hélène
Fournier and Kilberic Deltroy, the festival is also a technical conference about the blue harp. Its history is discussed, as is its acoustic sound and the new computer technologies that can be added to it, allowing harpists to get to know it better. As for the informal meetings between composers and the pupils and teachers who are their first representatives, these raise composers' awareness of the questions and needs of the young performers, so they can adapt themselves to composing pedagogic repertoire. The Odyssée de la Harpe is at the forefront of projects that bring alive the blue harp's future for us, and the story has many fine chapters still to come, such as with the MIDI harp...
This year, the Odyssée de la Harpe 2010 will take place between the 4th and 6th of June in the auditorium of the Bourgh-la-Reine Conservatoire. The evening of June 4th is dedicated to "new voices for the Odyssée", with pieces for harp and orchestra by K. Haddad, F. Tanada and L. Tugui. On June the 5th, in addition to pedagogic works for blue harp, there will be an exceptional performance using Camac Harps's new MIDI harp. Discover the programme more in the files below, and reserve your weekend and places from today!
Florence Lédi
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