Julien Pontvianne (Fr) / tenor saxophone, clarinet, composition
Isabel Sörling (Se) / voice
Francesco Diodati (It) / guitar
Adèle Viret (Fr) / cello
Alexandre Herer (Fr) / keyboard
Matteo Bortone (It) / bass
Originally, Abhra – Sanskrit word for the atmosphere, the emptiness… - was commissioned by the Centre International des Musiques Nomades and the Festival Détours de Babel in Grenoble, France, in 2014.
Six improvisers (from France, Italy, Irlande and England), mix their own cultures and their common interest for sound matters, around texts written by Henry David Thoreau - american philosopher, poet and scholar born in 1817. Thoreau puts nature at the centre of his thought, from what he extracts a moral - praise to the independence, to the simplicity, to the hedonistic asceticism… To be and settle in the world, let’s just breath, taste, touch, look, listen to the silence, feel, contemplate, observe…
The work on Thoreau’s diary is the heart of Abhra’s music, that plunges one in a delicate, intimiste universe, in which the role of the voice, the timbre, the resonant or the renewal of the forms of the song are the main concerns.
Abhra’s first album released in March 2016 (Onze Heures Onze – Auand).
New album "Seven Poems on Water" released on 21 october 2022
Continuing this work, Abhra's new repertoire is written around poems about water. Water is explored in seven texts by women and men from seven different countries, from Raquel Illonde (Guinea) to Emily Dickinson (USA), Nazim Hikmet (Turkey, Pryal Gagan (India)... Julien Pontvianne and Abhra offer a deep immersion in a delicate, intimate universe, stubbornly !uestioning the role of the voice, the sonic matter, the resonant, the melody and the forms of the song.
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Abhra #1
Julien Pontvianne (Fr) / tenor saxophone, clarinet, composition
Lauren Kinsella (Ir) / voice
Francesco Diodati (It) / guitar
Hannah Marshall (En) / cello
Alexandre Herer (Fr) / keyboard
Matteo Bortone (It) / bass
