The HANATSUmiroir ensemble, founded by Ayako Okubo and Olivier Maurel, joins forces with composer Elsa Biston around the original project Attentifs, ensemble, a creative and collective process created at La Pop in Paris, in April and May 2023 presented at the Musique Action festival in Vandoeuvre lès-Nancy. A double co-order HANATSUmirror & Human Landscapes.

The HANATSUmiroir ensemble, created in Strasbourg in 2010 by Ayako Okubo and Olivier Maurel , develops a certain conception of contemporary music performance, associating musical creation, scenography, video, dance, visual arts, lighting design, theatre and poetry. Since then, HANATSUmiroir has initiated numerous commissions of works in order to experiment with new formats of representation and listening to music.

For her part, Elsa Biston walks in the same way, constantly questioning her way of making music and giving to be heard, in an eminently material and philosophical research. The work of composition is as much about the conditions of creation as it is about the relationship with others.

Accompanied by double bassist Louis Siracusa Schneider and surrounded by Maxime Kurvers, they have designed a new sound experience: Attentifs, ensemble

Attentives, ensemble is an experience of listening and putting into a concert situation, which tries to make the listeners' attention coherent, in order to experience the strength of a common perception.
It is a reflection on music as a creator of links that is lived during a collective experience; which intensifies the relationship with the present, which builds a common history by inviting us to be demanding, together, the quality of our attention to the world. Attention is a political and collective issue. It's what connects us to reality, it's what allows us to build a common, shareable reality.
Sound informs us about the state of things and beings. It creates a relationship between two people or groups of people; It is the vector of an attention to the world – to the nothings, to the little things, to the details, to the complexity, to the depth of a situation.

The device that articulates the show is therefore that of guided listening. Sentences are projected on a screen, which offer participants different ways of listening. The writing of the piece is a weaving between these phrases and the music or the actions of the performers.

Attentive, together, the question arises of a music that would develop, allow attention to the world and the awareness of sharing a common space. This music cannot be reduced to an object – recordable and transportable, for example. We will listen together, musicians and the audience will observe each other in this collective experience where we will try to better perceive what is at stake in attention and listening. It is an invitation to synchronize our listening, through a projection of sentences, suggestions, quotes that propose different ways of listening.

With: Elsa Biston: electronics, Ayako Okubo: double bass flute, Olivier Maurel: percussion, Louis Siracusa-Schneider: double bass, Maxime Kurvers: collaboration on the stage, Raphaël Siefert, Léa Kreutzer: lighting

Co-productions: Hémisphère son-Paysages Humaines, La Pop-Incubateur artistique et citoyen Paris, the Centre Culturel André Malraux, Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy, the GMEM – Centre national de création musicale, Marseille.

The HANATSUmiroir ensemble is the winner of the 2022 Regional Prize for Gender Equality awarded by the Grand-Est Region.

Photo Elsa Biston© Marion Brunet