Talking Music is an exploration of the power of the spoken word. This has been a centre of interest for Strasbourg-based collective lovemusic over the past two years. This programme brings together four radically different works they have commissioned by Helmut Oehring, Michelle Agnes Magalhaes, Erin Gee and Philip Venables, all taking a different approach to the idea and identity of language and how this can be incorporated into musical performance.

Helmut Oehring’s new piece is based on speeches given before the war in March 2022 by the Russian President and Foreign Minister, also drawing on the composer’s mother tongue – sign language; Philip Venables explores the power of liberated verbal expression, approaching Simon Howard’s texts from a musical perspective; American singer and composer Erin Gee explores non-verbal communication by using the voice as an instrument of open sound production, rather than a vehicle of identity; and Michelle Agnes Magalhaes’s The Word, invocation for a language that revives invites each member of lovemusic to take part in the creative process, using translations into their mother tongues to update and colour the original Brazilian Portuguese text created in collaboration with poet Micheliny Verunschk.

“This project is possible thanks to Diaphonique, Franco-British fund for contemporary music in partnership with the Institut français du Royaume-Uni, the Sacem, the British Council, the French Ministry of Culture, the Bureau Export, the Institut français and the Friends of the French Institute Trust.”

With the friendly support of