Never away from Paris for too long, November 2014 saw us head back to the French capital for a weeklong artist-in-residence with the digital arts venue MISS – the Maison de l’Image et du Signe de Sevran.  Over the week we filmed great recording sessions and gave a couple of talks about the project to very enthusiastic students from local schools, and at the end of the week performed Orchestra of Samples in their theatre / cinema space.  Joining us on stage were Tunisian percussionist Seifeddine Helal and long time collaborator Alejandro de Valera.

Le Hangar, the excellent venue in the Ivry suburbs of Paris, recently began their first ever artists-in-residence programme and we had the incredible pleasure of being their very first, working with young musicians from both Le Hangar’s own music school and the local Music Conservatoire of Ivry.

It’s not often you get the chance to meet admired and long-time highly-regarded actual inventors of musical instruments, but this was one of those rare occasions! So we headed off to France to visit the Baschet studio, just south of Paris. The famous Baschet Brothers, François and Bernard, both in their 90s, pioneered a completely new way of combining sculpture and sound in the early 1950s. François was the musician and sculptor while Bernard was an engineer, and together they worked on creating both original installations and inventing new musical instruments.