TRAFFIC QUINTET
The Quintet
The Traffic Quintet made their debut in cinema in order to perform Alexandre Desplat’s music for Jacques Audiard’s film Un héros très discret. After their first encounter with the silver screen, they kept their film-inspired name, a homage to Jacques Tati, and began to explore the world of film music.
Composed of French instrumentalists from prestigious orchestras, this string ensemble – two violins, a viola, a cello and a double bass – aims to revisit the iconic soundtracks which have entered into musical canons. The subtle combination of classical strings lends this music a sound quality that is both dense and perfectly compatible with creative writing and a wide range of arrangements.
Traffic Quintet’s performances feed on fruitful exchanges between music and modern art – in particular video projections. This journey through the world of film music corresponds perfectly with the quintet’s desire to move freely between genres and periods. The abstract videos by artist Ange Leccia and the three-dimensional staging by set designer Bruno Cohen add an extra layer of poetic licence to a project which becomes a complete experience for the listener- spectator.
The Traffic Quintet has already performed in numerous prestigious venues in New York, Washington, at the Cité de la Musique and at the théâtre de l'Atelier in Paris, in Kuwait City, in Rome at the Villa Medici and at Cannes Film Festival, where the ensemble was invited to play at the inauguration night of the 60th Anniversary in 2007. The Traffic Quintet performed their second show Divine Féminin for the first time at Festival Musica Strasbourg, at the Ghent Film Festival and in Braunschweig (Germany) and Thessaloniki (Greece).
The Writers
Dominique Lemonnier, director, violinist
Leading the Traffic Quintet which she formed in 2005, the violinist Dominique Lemonnier continues to explore the world of film music in greater depth. After the success of Nouvelles Vagues, and in the company of the same artists, it is with great lucidity that she named this new show Divine Féminin: an in-depth search for timeless heroines.
Yes, the eye listens: Dominique Lemonnier knows the secrets of chamber music. Like an alchemist attentive to the possible echoes, she combines music, image, reminiscences, silences...
After perfecting her studies with the brilliant Henri Temianka in Los Angeles, and among the Chigiana chamber musicians in Sienna, she performed with numerous orchestras (Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Ensemble Instrumental de Lausanne, California Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble Mosaïque, European Camerata…).
With determined eclecticism, she regularly participates in various projects for cinema and theatre (with André Engel and Georges Lavaudant…). So many journeys have led to this production... It is a very personal path that Dominique Lemonnier and her colleagues have now forged.
Alexandre Desplat, composer
If his music for Jacques Audiard’s films Sur mes lèvres and De battre mon cœur s’est arrêté (Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival 2005, César Award in 2006) established his credibility in French cinema, it was with his scores for The Girl with the Pearl Earring, Birth and Syriana that Alexandre Desplat launched his career as one of the most active European composers in Hollywood. An innovative artist with original expression and a prolific composer who already has over 80 feature films to his credit, he is a worthy successor to the French masters of film music Georges Delerue, Antoine Duhamel, Michel Legrand and Maurice Jarre.
Among his recent scores are the soundtracks for The Queen (Stephen Frears), for which he received an Oscar nomination, The Painted Veil by John Curran which earned him the Golden Globe Award 2007, Un Prophète (Jacques Audiard), Lust, Caution (Ang Lee), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher) for which he was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe in 2009, Coco avant Chanel (Anne Fontaine), The Twilight Saga: New Moon (Chris Weitz), Julie and Julia (Nora Ephron) and The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski).
Alexandre Desplat has conducted the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and he also gives master classes at the Sorbonne and the Royal College of Music in London
Alexandre Desplat’s official website
Ange Leccia, videomaker
Ange Leccia has worked as both a painter and filmmaker since the 1980s. He began his cinematographic and videographic research at the Académie de France in Rome (Villa Medici). Light, time and space are the raw materials of his works, where cinematographic references abound.
His videos do not contain images, but rather “stations”: a pause, a place to keep watch and ward, a moment of observation, a location and time for reception and dissemination.
For several years now he has been focussing on his filmmaking activities, in particular with the short films Ile de beauté (1996) and Gold (2000), both co-directed with Dominique Gonzalez-Fœrster, followed by Azé (1999) in which he places a key emphasis on light and sound. He taught at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Grenoble and Cergy-Pontoise and he currently runs Le Pavillon, a research unit for young artists at the Palais de Tokyo, a centre for contemporary creativity. 2009 saw the release of his films Nuit Bleue with Cécile Cassel and François Vincentelli, and Antoine Bourdelle, which was presented at the Musée Antoine Bourdelle as part of the exhibition Ange Leccia et le Pavillon.
Jacques Monory
Born in Paris (1924). Lives and works in Cachan, near Paris.
From the very beginning, Jacques Monory's work has been a catharsis of the fear of death. Very directly with Meurtres, always more or less stealthily, a hint of catastrophe through very cinematographic subjects. Personal obsessions face collective myths. A passionate pessimist, his painting, films and texts make him a pertinent witness to our lives. An icily ironic view of the world; his humour is sometimes tinted with tenderness where women's faces pass.
He always paints in series: Meurtres / Velvet Jungle / Dreamtiger / Mesures / Le Catalogue Mondial des Images Incurables / Opéras Glacés / Technicolor / Ciels, Nébuleuses et Galaxies / Fuites / Jardinage / Métacrime / La Voleuse / Noir / Enigmes / Ex-crime / Les éléments du désastre / Baisers / Nuit / La vie imaginaire de Jonq' Erouas Cym / Vitrines / Couleur / Abréviation du vide/ Roman-photo/ Peintures sentimentales/ Tigres ...
Jacques Monory is a romantic at a time where his expression can only take on an appearance of realist dandyism.
Bruno Cohen, set designer
Set designer, filmmaker and director, Bruno Cohen has created numerous theatre, videography and scenography projects. He has also produced countless exhibitions and following the great tradition of visual arts in France, he has directed over fifty virtual theatre projects for museums and live performances.
For over twenty years he has combined new digital technology and the performing arts: Dialogues imaginaires, virtual theatre for the Jacques Callot year in Nancy; camera virtuosa at the ZKM in Karlsruhe, part of the permanent collection at the Media Museum; mais... l’ange, an installation presented in Montbéliard, Belfort and Prague. For Avignon off 2005 (Théâtre de la Manufacture) he created des-illusions, a composite show that mixes dance, theatre, virtual images and music.
Today he continues his work by writing and experimenting with composite artistic mechanisms that mix actors and virtual images within museography, choreography and theatre projects. Among his recent projects is a journey through time at the Théâtre Antique d’Orange in cooperation with Chorégies d’Orange and Roberto Alagna.
The Performers
Anne Villette, violin
After studies at the CNSMD (Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse) in Lyon and then at the University of Indiana (Bloomington), Anne Villette first joined the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in 1985.
She has been a full member of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France since 1987, but she also performs regularly as a soloist with an orchestra, and in recitals and chamber music concerts.
In line with her interest in other forms of musical expression she was a member of Jean-Marie Machado’s Jazz Vibracordes ensemble from 1988 to 1995 and has been part of Cuarteto Cedron’s tango orchestra La Tipica since 1998.
She is one of Traffic Quintet’s founding members.
Estelle Villotte, viola
She trained both at the CNSMD in Paris and with masters such as Barthold Kuijken and James Levine.
Estelle Villotte first performed with the European Union Orchestra under the direction of Bernard Haitink, Carlo Maria Giulini, Sir Colin Davis, Pierre Boulez and Claudio Abbado and then joined the Orchestre de Paris in 1998.
In parallel with her activities as an orchestra musician, she also participates in numerous festivals in a chamber music formation (Folles journées de Nantes, Festival de musique de chambre d’Epinal, Flâneries musicales de Reims).
Raphaël Perraud, cello
Raphaël Perraud trained at the Conservatoire de Valence, then at the CNSMD in Paris and Lyon, and followed master classes with Janos Starker, Roland Pidoux and Siegfried Palm.
A prize-winner in several international competitions, he has performed with prestigious orchestras and has also participated in numerous festivals in France and abroad as a chamber musician, in particular with Quatuor Renoir until 2004.
He is also an assistant professor at CNSMD in Paris and super soloist in the Orchestre National de France.
Philippe Noharet, double bass
Recruited by the Orchestre National de l’Opéra de Lyon under the direction of John Elliott Gardiner and Kent Nagano at the age of 17, soloist with the Ensemble Forum conducted by Marc Foster two years later, Philippe Noharet is currently the double bass player at the Opéra National de Paris.
Well known for performing film music and contemporary music, he also performs with Ute Lemper, Peter Gabriel and Richard Galliano.
He is a member of the ensemble Colors of Invention led by Gilles Apap.