The band spent two months in the basement of the museum creating and recording music. This is also a trend that is becoming widespread: museums increasingly invite musicians to imagine original formats, out of sight or in front of an audience.
After the publication of this article, the Louvre Museum announced on Monday May 22 that due to a health problem of one of its members, Feu! Chatterton was forced to cancel the three residency exit concerts and the masterclass he was to give at the Louvre on May 22, 23 and 25.
When the Fires! Chatterton pushed the door of the Louvre last March, to inaugurate a program imagined by the museum, their inspiration was immediately set in motion. “We felt very quickly that it was a great opportunity to have the opportunity to walk around here with a staff pass. It’s great because to approach the works, the eternal works and the beauty of the arts, to have this somewhat more intimate relationship, it’s precious“, confides Arthur Teboul, the singer of the group. And to slip “We don’t know in advance what we’re going to do and that’s what’s interesting.”
For two months, they therefore played, recorded, walked in front of the works, until writing new pieces, which they were to play during three concerts on May 22, 23 and 25.
“Spontaneous”
A group, an empty museum… It’s exactly the same logic as for another French jewel of pop: Phoenix. During the first confinement, the four members of the group recorded Alpha Zulu, their latest album, at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. “The place is essential, especially on this album, confirms Christian Mazzalai, guitarist. We wanted to go the opposite of the last album, of course, and look for a new virgin territory and find ourselves in this empty museum, like four children running through the corridors. And it was very spontaneous actually“.
An increasingly assumed openness
As for the Fires! Chatterton, they were also able to invite artists for concerts in situ, in fields very far from their own, whether with the rapper Prince Waly or the Trio Xenakis, who are more into contemporary music. For Sébastien Wolf, guitarist of Feu! Chatterton,”lots of stuff happened. The residency in the Louvre was not just about Fire! Chatterton. The idea was also to invite other artists to create things with us or not. There is an opening, the idea is to also open up to other disciplines.“
“We feel that in the Louvre, there is a desire to seek out new things that are no longer what traditional museums do around classical music.”
Sebastian Wolf, Fire! Chatterton, at franceinfo
And then, finally, there is the example of Albin de la Simone. Invited by the Musée d’Orsay for several months, and who was inspired by paintings in the exhibition Manet / Degas for some tracks from his latest album, The Next Hundred Years.
“We thought that maybe I could do the concerts for the release of my record at the museum, he explains, and also suggest routes where I could show the exhibition myself by singing songs and linking them to paintings. The museum was a source of inspiration and a place where my record will be born.“And in this case, both museum and musician are winners, with creation at the center of the game.