Sombre / Topos – Music salon with a population of sound animals

Jean-Luc Hervé is deeply inspired by nature, and his compositional practice explores the relationship between music and environment—both in the writing itself and in the forms and contexts of performance and sound installations. He draws a parallel between listening to new music and the experience of a walk in nature, where the ear remains alert to the surrounding sonic landscape.

Sombre, for cello and sound installation, forms part of a cycle of solo and chamber pieces that invite audiences to tune into their environment. The musician becomes a guide, opening our ears to the sounds around us. Like Saint Francis of Assisi, Papageno or the bird-whistlers of old, the performer enters into dialogue with the invisible presences that populate the space. At Utopiana, the house is transformed into a resonant ecosystem of dispersed and unseen sound sources. Each one repeats and gradually evolves a short musical motif, forming a vast polyphony reminiscent of animal communities in nature—of insects, amphibians or birds. Specific moments are designed for close listening, as a group gathers around the cellist performing the Sombre score. The music begins by weaving itself into the polyphony of the installation; then, as the instrument’s tones unfold under the musician’s hands, the sounds come alive, gain independence and continue developing even after the performer has left—forming a new “population” of sonic creatures.