Éther Festival 2026: «aẓǝl» Anouck Genthon

Carovana091 collaborates with Éther Festival, which will take place from June 3 to June 6, 2026. More info here: https://www.carovana091.ch/post/save-the-date-carovana091-ether-festival-2026

Anouck Genthon is a violinist whose musical work places particular emphasis on sound and listening. She explores the possibilities of her instrument while developing a personal language shaped by improvisation and composition. She is committed to interdisciplinary research practices and performs in a wide variety of contexts at the intersection of improvised, experimental, contemporary, electroacoustic, and traditional music, through projects ranging from solo performances to large ensembles.

She collaborates in duo settings with Lionel Marchetti, David Meier, Antoine Läng, and Ed Williams, as well as with the groups tangent+mek, LGBS, Le Un, Insub., and Grand Chahut Collectif.

She is the author of the books Fictation (Gamut, 2020) and Tuareg Music: From Political Symbolism to Aesthetic Singularization (L’Harmattan, 2012).

aẓǝl (“violin air”) has its roots in an ethnomusicological research project I conducted in Niger between 2008 and 2012 on Tuareg music. This long-term immersion allowed me, among other things, to discover the sound and the deeply meaningful use of the anzad, a one-string fiddle traditionally played by women. The distinctive quality of its timbre and playing technique remained with me, resurfacing many years later in my own violin sound.

It was from this immersion that this solo work emerged, tracing and extending this lineage from my position as an ethnomusicologist to that of a musician, from the sound of the anzad to that of the violin.

aẓǝl, which has become “my” violin air, can thus be understood both as the result of this lineage and as its continuation within the heart of my own sonic affinities. I began writing this piece using my personal archives as a point of departure, as an attempt to translate my own memory trace, thereby composing a musical form shaped by these accumulated layers of experience. Coming back in order to move forward.

aẓǝl is a work that unfolds through slow metamorphoses: an accumulation of layers, like sediments deposited over time, creating a musical form that does not describe but suggests, does not explain but allows things to surface. It is an album that requires attention and patience, yet rewards the listener with rare depth, offering an experience that is at once meditation, the trace of a cultural encounter, and an act of transformed memory.

Ultimately, aẓǝl is a luminous example of how an artistic journey can emerge from a dialogue between different worlds—Tuareg tradition, ethnomusicology, and contemporary improvisation—and be transformed into a personal, identity-forming sonic gesture of essential poetry.” (Andrea Rossi)

https://anouckgenthon.com/solo-a%e1%ba%93%c7%9dl/