Serge Vuille

Serge Vuille is a Swiss programmer, curator, percussionist and composer active on the contemporary and experimental music scene.

He has developed an open-minded and committed approach to contemporary music through the Kammer Klang series and the percussion and electronics ensemble We Spoke, of which he was artistic director for five and ten years respectively. In April 2018, he took over as artistic director of the Ensemble Contrechamps, with which he continues to develop, promote and contextualise contemporary and commissioned instrumental music.

As a musician, he has performed with the London Sinfonietta, the Ensemble Ictus, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Martin Creed Band, as well as giving solo performances at the Huddersfield HCMF, London LCMF, Schubertiades, SMC Lausanne, Musikpodium Zürich and Druskomanija Vilnius festivals. He regularly collaborates with composers, performers and artists to create new works, and composes concert music as well as multimedia pieces that are performed in Switzerland, Europe and America.

He teaches experimental music and coaches the percussion ensemble at the Royal College of Music in London. He also regularly leads masterclasses and workshops at the Birmingham Conservatoire and with dance students at La Manufacture in Lausanne.

Editorial

EARTH, BODIES, STORIES

I’m writing these lines from the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra…

As Contrechamps rehearses four works by Aboriginal artists midway through our Australian tour, from my current vantage point it feels impossible not to marvel at and cherish everything that ties us to this world, to its continents and to the generosity of nature – and not to wholeheartedly embrace the exchanges and bridges that can be built across cultures. This season, we explore our relationship with the land and with nature, and the ways in which we connect with and become rooted in particular places. The season takes us to the edge of reality in Sarah Nemtsov’s Neverland, into the liminal urban landscape of Ari Benjamin Meyers’s Civil Twilight, and even into an encounter with pigeons in Robin Meier Wiratunga’s work. In each, music reveals connections and affinities that reach beyond languages and species. Our work with First Nations artists has brought this relationship with land, place and story into particularly sharp focus.

Our connections to places are also shaped through our ties to one another. Developing Catherine Lamb’s new work in just intonation with Ensemble Dedalus, joining the next generation of conductors as they interpret our repertoire at the Concours de Genève, forging creative connections within the Ensemble through the musicians’ Carte Blanche, sharing an evening with the AMR, and embarking on a new project with our inclusive Chœur en Fusion and Benoît Moreau: each offers a way of inhabiting and sharing a common space, of forming a collective body, with music fostering cohesion and encounters across boundaries. And then there are the stories that places carry. Performers embodying characters with Nardi Simpson; Japanese Noh theatre inspiring Kaija Saariaho; Hodler’s landscapes reflected in Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night. The narrative and abstract power of music in the service of ideals, utopias and lived experience.

We hope to bring the spirit of our encounters with Aboriginal artists in Canberra home with us, shaping a season rooted in our own ground and its stories, as well as those of our guests and our community. Let's reach out and take hold of every lifeline and bridge that gives contemporary music and creation a life that is joyful, generous, and embodied.

Serge Vuille, artistic director