What's La Folle Journée?

• What's La Folle Journée?
• The Unique Features
• Outline of the Facilities
• René Martin
• Naming of each facility

About René Martin

Artistic Director

Profile

Immediately after completion of a degree in business management, René Martin started to study music (percussion, music history, music notation, harmony, electroacoustic music), and then established the arts research and creation center known as CREA in the city of Nantes. In 1979 he became the centers artistic director, introducing programs of classical music in Nantes and the surrounding Loire region each year, with emphasis on chamber music and liturgical music. In 1981 he began holding an International Piano Festival known as La Roque dAnthéron. This festival, which has developed into the largest of its kind in the world, features regular performances by the worlds great artists, including Radu Lupu, Martha Argerich, Mikhail Pletnev, Evgeny Kissin, Nelson Freire and Nikolai Lugansky. In 1988, Sviatoslav Richter entrusted Martin with the task of staging the Grange de Meslay Festival, leading to close cooperative relationship between the two men. Martin planned more than 100 concerts with Richter, taking the direction of the festival. His ideas also took fruit at the concert series known as December Nights at Pushkins Museum in Moscow.

Starting in 1986, he began staging the chamber music event known as Music Time: From Ermitage to Ball. This featured performances by the most famous chamber musicians of our times, including the Lindsay String Quartet, Alain Meunier, Régis Pasquier, Jean-Claude Pennetier, Roland Pidoux, Gerard Causse, the Capuçon brothers and Jean-Efflam Bavouzet. Two years later, in 1988, he became an artistic director of Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud, the largest-scaled Christian monastery in the Western Europe. Boasting 10 concert halls, this monastery was able to invite numerous orchestras specializing in liturgical music and directed by such leading lights as Philippe Herreweghe, William Christie, Paul van Nevel and Christophe Spelling.

Along with these many projects, Martin has also been extending his activities overseas under the name La Belle Nantes, planning concert tours in Japan, Brazil and Britain. Drawing on his vast experience in staging many festivals, Martin realized an even more ambitious project in 1995: La Folle Journée, an epoch-making event that overturned the standard image of classical music concerts. Held every year, this festival conveys to the general public the true fascination of composers chosen from the classical repertory via more than 200 concerts. Celebrating the 10th anniversary of its inception in Nantes, La Folle Journée 2004 attracted 120,000 music fans. Its success has now spread to Lisbon Portugal, where the event has been held since 2000. In 2004, about 80,000 Portuguese music fans gathered in Lisbon for La Folle Journée. As interest in the event grew in Europe, the organizers drew on their experience to hold the event in Bilbao, Spain starting in March 2002. The following year, the Bilbao festival was able to attract 20,000 listeners.

In 2004, René Martin has been displaying his talents as an artistic director in more than 900 concerts.
The year 2005 will witness the initial staging of La Folle Journée in Tokyo.

Interview is here