In January the new concert hall in Paris with the sober name Philharmonie 1 was inaugurated. I was there covering the opening for the Scandinavian music magazine Opus. It was an event in the shadow of the attacks against the magazine Charlie Hebdo. You can read the Opus article here. It’s in Swedish though.
Now I would love to be back in Paris. Tonight there is a performance at Philharmonie 1 of the oratorio Jeanne d’Arc au Bucher (Joan of Arc at the stake) by Honegger. Marion Cotillard, known among other things for her role as Adriana in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, plays the role of Jeanne. She also starred in the film about Edith Piaf, La Vie en Rose.
In the neighbour house, the old Cité de la Musique, now Philharmonie 2, the large Bowie exhibition opened yesterday. It has previously been seen in London and Berlin. In Paris it’s peppered with surrounding activities. On Saturday, for example, there’s a performance in the Philharmonie 1 with choreography, film and music where everything revolves around Bowie’s album Heroes and Low. The music of Bowie and Philip Glass is played by the Orchestre National d’Ile-de-France.
Bowie did in fact his own recording of Heroes in French. Check out the YouTube clip.