The European figure of a 21st-century Ulysses is found throughout IRCAM's artistic season in Paris and abroad. Could Ulysses be an emerging artist climbing to the heights of creation, festivals, or of effervescent cities like London, Berlin, and Tokyo, multiplying his "musical plundering" to forge his own language? Or he could be the young musician in the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra and who, directed by Pierre Boulez, will open IRCAM's season at the Salle Pleyel? Or is Ulysses a doctoral student in the IRCAM laboratory, taking part in the elaboration of an artistic prototype? In 2012, "Ulysses" became the label for a new European network of academies, and is also the name of he, who for the first time, succumbs to the charm of sound creation. The "Workshops of Creation", a pilot action developed throughout France focused on students far from any cultural institutions. Submersed in the heart of creation, they address visual arts, sound arts, and new technologies simultaneously.

From the Festival de Lucerne 2012 to ManiFeste-2013 in Paris, from Strasbourg to Warsaw, from Lille to Blagnac, the milestones on this journey are the chronicles of works that make up a repertoire; this journal of creation at IRCAM focuses on the spirit of venues rather than the memories of venues, a factory of the contemporary rather than a museum. A place for experiments like IRCAM's Espace de projection, equipped in 2012 with a dome made of ambisonic technology and a WFS (Wave Field Synthesis) horizon; no exit for the opera Quartett by Luca Francesconi based on Heiner Müller's text; a kind of limbo in Stefano Gervasoni's opera bouffe... We dedicate this essentially vocal program to the crucial work by Jonathan Harvey who, from Wagner Dream to the dream of a talking orchestra, Speakings, has never stopped intermixing visions of the future with beauty.

Frank Madlener

Illustration : © Thinkstock - Vénus entre la terre et le soleil, le 6 juin 2012