This deluxe package includes a film by Jean-Paul Fargier Habiter le Présent/To Live the Present, featuring the musicians recorded at the Musée de l¹Orangerie. Enclosed as well are a 16 page booklet with color photos of the musicians among Alain Kirili¹s sculptures and Monet¹s paintings by Ariane Lopez-Huici, and a 20 page booklet containing an essay by French philosopher Paul Audi in both English and French.
Two musicians at the peak of their sensitivity: Roscoe Mitchell and Jérôme Bourdellon. A singer at the height of his finesse: Thomas Buckner. A woman of intelligent and generous beauty: Dalila Khatir, whose singing takes its source from the danceor the dance from the singing, we shall never know. These are the musicians intimately involved with Hommage à Monet, the latest in an ongoing series of collaborations between the artist Alain Kirili and improvising musicians, dancers and composers over many years. Other collaborators have included violinists Leroy Jenkins and Billy Bang, saxophonists Joseph Jarman and Steve Lacy, trombonist Roswell Rudd, pianist Cecil Taylor, dancer Maria Mitchell, and composers Alvin Lucier and Somei Satoh. The improvisatory energy that is palpable in Kirili's sculpture and drawing is in part inspired by his deep relationship with improvised music, and this energy in turn inspires the musicians and dancers to make the energy in the sculpture audible and visible. Hommage à Monet is also the latest in a series of dialogues with great artists of the past that Kirili has exhibited in major museums over many years. Bourdellon, Buckner, Khatir, and Mitchell participated in this project and had the opportunity to respond musically and kinetically to the dialogue between Alain Kirili's sculpture and one of the greatest icons of modern art, Claude Monet's "Les Nympheas"(Water Lilies). The performance took place on June 21, 2007 as a part of the great "Fete de la Musique" that occurs all over France on the longest day of the year. The Musee de l¹Orangerie graciously allowed a performance in the presence of the newly reinstalled Nympheas, and gave the musicians and filmmaker Jean-Paul Fargier access to the museum on the day before the performance for rehearsal and filming of the DVD.
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