FL: How to create a community of listeners? Is organizing concerts enough?
PJ: Not really! A community of listeners would really start in our early education about life and the arts, therefore at school. What I think is missing from our education system is an attempt to confer a certain worldliness on young people, a familiarity with the ways of the world and a lot of people are confused when they enter social networks where everyone is able to comment about everything. I always believed in education, not only for children but also for adults. I am dreaming about a series of meetings with the audience, throughout the year, where we could share art with one another, talk about it, explain, discover…
FL: The leitmotif of this year's festival is a neologism invented by you – Kaleidophonia. What does it mean?
PJ: Well, in fact I thought that it was a neologism but in 1827, a scientist named Charles Wheatstone invented a curious device named the Kaleidophone. In a simple way, I wanted to express the idea of the fragmentation of a single element into multiplicity. I immediately thought of the kaleidoscope and changed "scope" to "phonia". It would, in a sense, express the complexity and very important diversity of the field of new music. An ‘object’ full of colors, shaped with sharp edges, always different but part of the same energy.
FL: In the text announcing the festival, you talk about ‘the exploration of new forms of concert’. What are they?
PJ: For many years, and still today, the concerts were built on a very classic approach to staging; that means long programs with long changes between pieces and only rarely a consideration of the visual dimension. Even if this classical way of producing a concert is completely fine in some cases, I like also to try to propose to the audience a more global experience where for example we attempt to create only one universe (that will be the case with the opening concert) or we can share the concert experience in some alternative environment (concert of Kompopolex for example). In an ideal world, I would like to set up an academy for staging concerts, working with stage directors, light engineers, in order to really work on that specific matter. I am not trying to seduce by this visual approach, I just consider it absolutely essential, as I see in dance or theatre networks how much it can change the content, in an extraordinary way.