Olivier Dejours

As a conductor and composer, he had the constant desire to bring together tradition and creation into his work. After piano, percussion, composition and conducting studies, Olivier Dejours was a member of the Percussions de Strasbourg from 1976 to 1982. They created and played pieces written by more than thirty composers, among them Iannis Xenakis, John Cage, Claude Ballif, Luis de Pablo and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

He then began a career as both conductor and composer with the constant desire to bring together tradition and creation. As a conductor, he has led operas including several notable premieres such as To Be Sung by Pascal Dusapin, Jakob Lenz by Wolfgang Rihm, La Sonate des spectres by Aribert Reimann, La Confession impudique by Bernard Cavanna and Der Kaiser von Atlantis by Viktor Ullmann. He spent a few years developing – first with Le Banquet and then Le Banquet Orchestra – a project of parallels between the music of Mozart and that of contemporary composers. He has also composed numerous works for the stage, notably for Matthias Langhoff, Michel Deutsch, Jean Dautremay and Gilberte Tsaï, among others. In particular, he has questioned the relationship between music and language, between speaking and singing.

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