In the Alps, a symphony orchestra makes its bicycle tour to preserve the planet

The tour is called Tune Your Bikes! The thirty or so members of the orchestra will travel nearly 250 km by bicycle and provide around twenty concerts.

They do not go unnoticed on country roads. And when they arrive in a stopover town, one would almost be tempted to applaud this odd peloton. But unlike professional cyclists, the end of the race is not synonymous with rest. Quite the contrary. As soon as you arrive, you have to unpack the instruments. Smaller ones, such as violins, fit in luggage racks. The most important, batteries or cellos, are transported in trailers. That day, the orchestra Les Forces Majeurs which is in Isère settles in a park of a town of 5000 inhabitants. “We are going to offer music that objectively we have never heard at Versoud” reports Raphaël Merlin, conductor of the Major Forces. The 16 musicians take their instruments and begin to play. The notes of Strauss, Mendelssohn and even Chabrier resonate in the village in front of dozens of comfortably seated spectators.

The orchestra Les Forces Majeurs is inaugurating its first bike tour this year. In October 2021, the musicians had already participated in an edition Tune your bikes!, in Paris, over one day. They had played concerts in different places in the capital while traveling by bicycle. Since 2020, Major forces definitively renounced the use of the plane and drafted an environmental charter. This spring’s tour aims to assess the carbon impact of the orchestra’s travels. “We memorize the journeys we make. How many vehicles we use. How many bikes are muscular, electric. We count all that and we will draw conclusions” explains Robin Ducancel, tour director. Most of the concerts offered on this tour are free. Subsidies helped finance part of this project. The orchestra has opened an online kitty on the helloasso site to finalize its financing.

Tour Tune your bikes!until April 24, 2022, concerts in 20 cities