Highlights
Spotlight on the latest from our Franco-British-Irish musical collaborations.
2025 Diaphonique Laureates
We are delighted to unveil the eight projects selected for the 2025 edition of Diaphonique. Spanning contemporary music, experimental theatre, sound performance, and electroacoustic creation, this year’s laureates embody the boldness, hybridity, and international spirit at the heart of the programme. From archives and improvisation to feminist perspectives and cutting-edge collaborations, these works will unfold across France, the UK, and Ireland—amplifying new voices and building lasting artistic bridges.
Samai Sounds Association
A creation project bringing together Franco-Lebanese composer Layale Chaker, the Idrîsî Ensemble (UK), and Francesco Turrisi (Ireland), centered on the medieval female figure of the trobairitz. Blending early and contemporary music, the project explores Mediterranean traditions through a female-centred and decolonial lens. Concerts will take place in France, the UK, and Ireland.
lovemusic collective + WACK
The duo WACK (Neil Luck & Jennifer Walshe) joins forces with lovemusic (FR) for an immersive one-hour performance combining archives, stage interactions, and contemporary music. The piece, commissioned from Neil Luck, fuses theatre, sound, and visuals into a hybrid and experimental collage. The project supports the creation of a new work and encourages experimentation with emerging artists.
Festival d’Automne in Paris
A series of concerts at IRCAM as part of the 2025 Festival d’Automne, in partnership with the Huddersfield Festival, highlighting three key figures in contemporary music creation: Rebecca Saunders, Alex Paxton, and Lisa Illean. Their works, performed by Ensemble Nikel and Noa Frenkel, explore the physicality of sound and the interplay between language, rhythm, and timbre.
Félicia Atkinson
In Lieu of Annie A is a performance project combining voice, poetry, electroacoustic music, and DJ set in tribute to visual artist Anni Albers. It brings together Félicia Atkinson, Time is Away, and Christina Petrie in a sensitive reflection on archives, textiles, and listening. The project weaves a dialogue between performed poetry (in English and French), electroacoustic sounds, field recordings, and curatorial practices. Inspired by weaving as a metaphor for creation, it explores memory, perception, and documentation.
L’Émoi Sonneur
A staged performance for spoken voice and electroacoustic music. Welsh actor John Rowley interacts with Nicolas Perrin’s sonic world through a set of amplified objects. The piece questions listening through a fragile and burlesque poetry of the more-than-human. Born from a lockdown collaboration (The John’s Lockdown Diary), this creation explores diverse texts in a free and accessible form.
MUZZIX
A musical encounter between French saxophonist Sakina Abdou and British pianist Pat Thomas. This intergenerational duo delves into experimental jazz and improvisation through a residency in Lille and concerts at Café Oto (London), supported by Muzzix and its European partners. The project creates a dialogue between two artists of different generations and aesthetics through a shared language: improvisation and contemporary music. It marks a strong artistic gesture connecting the emerging French scene with the British avant-garde, with plans to sustain the collaboration through recordings and future tours.
ONCEIM
ONCEIM presents orchestral works by Christian Marclay and Genevieve Murphy at hcmf// 2025 (UK), in a UK premiere, followed by a French tour in 2026 (Nantes, Paris). These new large ensemble works are the result of close collaboration between the composers and the ensemble. The project explores the orchestra as an experimental space, blending open notation, guided improvisation, and sound gestures. It gives both composers the opportunity to work in this format for the first time and encourages dialogue between non-institutionalised artistic scenes.
The Night With…
Violinist Rachel Koblyakov explores works for violin and electronics by Boulez (Anthèmes II), Saariaho (Frises), and Timothy Cooper (Shimmering) with the ensemble The Night With…. The project brings together artists and institutions from the UK and France in a co-creation dynamic around major works from the French electroacoustic repertoire. Franco-American violinist Rachel Koblyakov performs Boulez’s pieces alongside a new work by British composer Timothy Cooper, who also handles the live electronic processing. The Edinburgh concert, linked to an academic conference on Boulez at the Institut Français, reinforces Franco-British cultural and intellectual cooperation.
