Sounds, tears and skins

A century of artistic itinerancy at the crossroads of Marseille and the US (1929-2026)

In 2018, Ensemble Télémaque created October Lab, an international platform for musical creation that aims to produce and disseminate new works that transcend styles and trends. To this end, commissions are awarded to composers from around the world, built around continually renewed themes.

Sounds, Tears and Skins marks Ensemble Télémaque’s first collaboration with artists from the United States. Led by Raoul Lay, the ensemble is commissioning this year a new generation of American composers: David Dominique, Yu-Hui Chang, John Aylward, and Kate Soper, who are developing new musical works based on French and American texts that were written in, or left a significant imprint on, both Marseille, France and the United States.

The project also establishes a dialogue between four literary figures of the twentieth century: Claude McKay, Mary Jayne Gold, Franz Werfel, and Antonin Artaud — all of whom experienced various forms of discrimination and alienation linked to either their gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, or ideological and political convictions.

Through the 20th Century histories these literary figures trace, our project explores the notions of travel and migration of marginalized communities who are connected by their intersections with the U.S. and Marseille, France. Our project asks our commissioned composers to respond to the fractured moments in history that their authors experienced and the frightening similarities to our present day: comparisons that raise profound questions.

Our event will consist of four works in which spoken and sung voices will engage in dialogue with the instrumental writing, allowing the intertextuality of the diverse literary figures represented to resonate.

In spring 2026, Ensemble Télémaque will travel to the United States to perform the works of the four commissioned composers in concert, before welcoming them again in Marseille for new performances in autumn 2026.