ERRER (Wandering) - AVELUNE

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Emma Thomazeau and Baptiste Baudimant created Avelune after their encounter as members of the National Youth Orchestra of France (Orchestre Français des Jeunes) in 2020. A shared desire to gather all kinds of audiences, compose their own musical universe, and arouse people’s curiosity led the two musicians to combine all their skills. They have created a repertoire in which classical, experimental, minimalist, and contemporary music blend on their instruments, offering poetic and mesmerising moments.

This promising young duo is the winner of the Lavaux Classic competition and a semi-finalist of the World Harp Competition. The pair combines the harp’s sensitive and organic playing with rich and outstanding sound processing provided by new technology and invites the audience to embark on an inner and celestial journey.

This first album represents the culmination of two years of work, experimentation, reflection and sharing. We both wanted to create an authentic and unique aesthetic line while seeking the right balance between our different artistic influences in a free and unbridled mindset.

Errer (Wandering) is the meeting point for all our ideas, a frozen entity of our constantly moving musical desires. Caroline Despont’s poem Errances accompanies the eleven tracks on this album, which form a narrative about our inner wanderings, desires, doubts, daydreams, and the states of mind we all face someday.

Emma Thomazeau, Baptiste Baudimant

BIOGRAPHIES

Emma Thomazeau was born in France and developed a passion for the harp from an early age. Through this genuine means of expression, she plunged into the creative world of music, where curiosity and wonder led her to share her vocation in various contexts.

Emma began playing the harp in Claire Le Fur’s class in Saint-Raphaël. She went on to study with Letizia Belmondo at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Lausanne, where she obtained her Master’s degree in pedagogy, followed by her Master’s degree as a soloist in 2023, both awarded with the highest distinction.

A winner of several international competitions, Emma plays regularly in orchestras and is invited to give recitals in Switzerland and France. She is both a soloist and a teacher, having been passing on her passion to pupils of the Montreux-Vevey- Riviera Conservatoire since 2021. Passing from the Celtic harp to the electronic harp, she integrates her instrument in several collective creative projects such as the Ensemble Puzzle and Avelune. An ambitious dreamer, Emma is keen to express and share her musical universe in a free and innovative manner with a wide range of audiences.

Born into a family of artists, Baptiste Baudimant is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and arranger. He draws on a variety of musical influences to cre­ate his own aesthetic signature, in which bagpipes, trombones, and synthesizers are showcased and combined in a style that blends traditional, classical, and contemporary music.

A trombone graduate of the major music conservatories and academies in Strasbourg, Paris and Geneva, he regularly plays with numerous orchestras in France and Switzerland. In addition to his classical training, he has developed an interest in electroacoustic music in a more contemporary and innovative style, for which he has won several prizes.

His various musical influences – drawn from both the electronic music scene and traditional French regional music – combined with his creative enthusiasm have led him to work on numerous musical projects. These include short films, documentaries and exhibitions, where his eclectic and singular musical identity is acknowledged and appreciated.

THANKS !

• The HEMU Foundation, the HEAR and the Clabo Association for supporting our project.

• Claves Records, in particular Patrick Peikert for his trust and assistance.

• Johannes Kammann (Nordklang) and all the sound engineers we met along the way for their invaluable advice. 

• The various venues that gave us a warm welcome to promote our music.

• Our teachers who believed in us before we did and taught us so much.

• Hugo Siclier for his beautiful photos and his kindness.

• Our families and close friends for their unfailing support. Feeling supported at all times and with so much love gives us boundless energy for which we will be eternally grateful.

Translated from French by Musitext – Michell Bulloch

REVIEWS

Le Courrier

«  [.. ] Une belle prise de son, réalisée dans la salle Utopia 1 du Conservatoire de Lausanne, met en valeur la proposition du tandem: le grain acoustique des deux instruments, voluptueux et nuancé, est par instants modulé et modifié par l’électronique sous le pilotage rythmique et textural de Baptiste Baudimant. Et c’est le poème «Errances» de l’écrivaine suisse Caroline Despont qui nous guide dans ce voyage sonore en onze étapes. » - Gianluigi Bocelli, décembre 2024

MusicWeb International

"[..] Attractive roulades of harp in an immersive halo of electronic ambience and birdsong pervade a brief Ouverture. Emersion is akin to waking up and walking bleary-eyed into the crisp spring air. Electronic percussion and harp provide a pleasant soundscape, but whilst Thomazeau is clearly a skilful practitioner and Baudimant evidently expert in a studio environment, it’s all rather superficial and ‘new-agey’. The (French) text of Despont’s poem comes to the fore in Errances I. Thomazeau’s evocative, expressive recitation invokes different forms of transportation and landscape but I think the text is alluding to states of daydreaming implied by the elusive, semi-formed soundscape pulsing underneath the words. I certainly found myself drifting off. [..]" - Richard Hanlon, November 2024