Edition: VII
Guillaume Auvray
Country: Belgium
The Artist's Music
Bio/Studies
Guillaume Auvray was born on April 11, 1990 in Etterbeek, Belgium. At the tender age of eight, he started studying harmony, music history, music theory, piano and accompaniment at the village music school. As an active young man involved in cultural development, he founded a semi-professional symphonic orchestra and choir in 2008, in collaboration with one of his teachers.
One year later he was admitted to the Lemmens Instituut to study Harmony, Counterpoint and Orchestra Conducting. In 2010 he transferred to the Royal Conservatory of Music in Liege to join the Class of Michel Fourgon and Gilles Gobert in Acoustical music Composition and Technology & Electronic music Composition. In that same year he became head organist at the St. John the Baptist church of Wavre
In 2014, while continuing his courses, he was accepted at the Conservatorium Maastricht in the class « Contemporary music ensembles Conducting » of Robert HP Platz, and, at the Royal Conservatory of Music of Liege, in the Orchestra Conducting class of Patrick Baton.
Career
Still in 2014, he was appointed for two years as artistic director and conductor of the Orchestre Jean-Noël Hamal de Liège, and for one year as conductor of the young dutch contemporary music ensemble, the Chaves ensemble. In November 2014 the Orchester der Großregion premièred his first cello concerto in prestigeous halls across different countries of the Großregion. In that same month Guillaume founded the Kammerphilharmonie Legia together with Aymeric Cabley.
During the last two years he has been assistant Conductor during the “Piano Prestige” – Festival in Cazouls-lès-Béziers conducted by Jean-Bernard Pommiers, as well as assistant conductor of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrücken conducted by Robert HP Platz and during the Guitar+ festival in Wurzburg. Currently, he is conducting the Helicante chamber choir and working on his first opera : “Michaïl”, based on Svetlana Aleksïevitch’s book : “Chernobylskaya molitva” – Chernobyl’s Prayer, as well as on a symphonic piece commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Liège, « Niflheim ».
Notes on the Musma Composition
For the writing of this string quartet, I was inspired directly by a few verses of the Mahmoud Darwish poem selected by Klara Festival under the theme “Music and Exile”. The structure of the piece revolves around important changes of contrasts, inviting the listener to continuously balance between the nostalgia for a past time and the harshness of the present time, between the hope of a renewal and the reality of a spoiled youth.
The composition is also intended to be a tribute, through some rhythmic structures and gestures, not only to Mahmoud Darwish himself, but also to certain composers who are dear to me and who, too, have experienced exile under the pressure of a war or sometimes for ideological reasons.
The soundtrack is made up of a multitude of recordings of free translations of the two verses that inspired the work and, in the languages and dialects of friends, colleagues or acquaintances from all walks of life, leaving the circle of musicians and music lovers to open to each of us.
The quartet will subsequently be declined to other forms of instrumentation, without a soundtrack, in quintet with double bass and / or with chorus and reciting.
