TOULOUSE: SOUNDS ACROSS THE CITY!
2010, a year for paying homage to bells, carillons and astronomical clocks!

Just like organs, clocks mix music and messages, calling the faithful and all citizens to come together, marking the passage of time – sacred time and secular time.
Organists and bell-ringers often take the same winding staircase to climb to their instruments, sharing the key moments in the life of the community. In the days when the loudest sounds in town rang out from its church towers and belfries, they announced market days, celebrated harvests, honoured visitors and acclaimed victories.

From the charming carillon of Saint-Sernin to the enormous bourdon of the cathedral of Saint-Étienne, the city's three hundred bells will ring to mark the opening and closing of the 15th edition of Toulouse les Orgues. Over eleven days, festival-goers will be able to choose between fifty events.

All round the city, the carillon players will settle into their belfries, while the Dutch master carillon-player Boudewijn Zwart will apply hands and feet to his three-tonne concert carillon on the Place du Capitole and at Port Viguerie: fifty bronze bells will interpret works from Bach to the Beatles.

The musicians have found natural links with the art and architecture of belfries and clocks. They have slipped into their programmes some tintinnabulatory allusions: works that imitate the rural sounds of the carillon or obsessively repeat the peals that chime the hour.
The opening concert has a scent of Italy with a journey to the heart of the Ars Subtilior: the Mala Punica ensemble, directed by the flautist Pedro Memelsdorff, will apply all its artistic virtuosity to the repertoire of the era of Dondi (14th Century) and the Court of the Viscontis. As an echo to this concert dedicated to the Astrarium, the Paul Dupuy Museum will be exhibiting its astonishing collection of astronomical clocks.

Guest performers:
The Ensemble Baroque de Limoges for a Carillons concert in which porcelain bells merge their tinkling with the rich sounds of the viol (viola da gamba) of Christophe Coin and his musicians; the organists Yoann Tardivel and Thomas Ospital, a "Duo à Cloche Pied et à Quatre Mains"; the master carillon-player Christine Laugié; and Ansgar Wallenhorst, who improvises sound fantasies on the organ keyboards of the Basilica of Saint-Sernin worthy of the extravaganzas directed by Cecil B. DeMille.
The Les Passions orchestra will perform the very rare concerto for harpsichord and pianoforte by C.P.E. Bach.
Yves Rechsteiner will demonstrate the versatility of the organ of the Dalbade with a choice of works specially adapted to show off the instrument's rich potential.

The Festival will be extending its homage to Johann Sebastian Bach with The Art of the Fugue by James David Christie and celebrates the anniversary of a composer whom Bach loved and admired: Giovanni Battista Pergolesi and his famous Stabat Mater.

In the closing event, the Les Éléments choir will present its Polychoralités concert, creating echoes and surprising spatial sound effects, sought by composers from the Renaissance to the 21st Century.