Ensemble Cairn

A cairn is a small pile of stones found in the mountains. It serves as a signpost or path for those that venture there, and each passer-by adds his or her stone to the pile. This was probably our own wish, too: to create the feeling, during our concerts, of a listening path, to put quite different types of music side by side, to allow audiences to hear the cohesion among the members of the Cairn ensemble, to put together programmes that are like objects themselves, like musical compositions. The Cairn ensemble has existed since 1997. Jérôme Combier is its artistic director, and Guillaume Bourgogne its musical director. Its goal is to conceive concerts that emphasise the music of its own time. They also express the desire to confer a certain mise en scène to their performances. These are put together - much like a musical composition - as an area of questioning whose aim is to create a unified programme, a specific order for the works performed and a consciousness of the connections among them, of the musicians' actions on stage, and of the possibilities offered by the concert venue. Some of Cairn's concerts confront other art forms, such as the plastic arts, photography and video, as well as other types of music: the ensemble has had encounters with the jazz musicians Vincent Lê Quang, Marc Ducret, John Hollenbeck. Often a basic idea, a principle - perhaps the idea of a musical fragment, a transcription, of the importance of hands, of darkness - can bring together an entire concert. The Cairn ensemble wishes to be a group that has a conductor as well as a group that gives rigorous performances of chamber music. Cairn receives support from the la Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles d’Île-de-France and the Sacem.