FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3RD
ORCHESTRE TOUT PUISSANT MARCEL DUCHAMP
SPAZIO TEATRO 89
Via Fratelli Zoia 89 – Milano
Born in Geneva in 2006 at the instigation of double bass player Vincent Bertholet, the Orchester Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp is initially a sextet (“a rock group with marimba” as Bertholet defines it) whose name intends to pay homage to African orchestras and Dada art together. A Third World and ecological spirit, and a programmatic reluctance to gender schemes, conventions and labels. It was in 2016, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the project, that the decision was made to expand the band to the XXL format, which will obviously be on our stage this evening: double rhythm section, double bass, two marimbas, cello, violin, wind instruments, guitars . Everyone sings.
Their latest album “We’re ok but we’re lost anyway”, released in 2021 for Bongo Joe Records, was greeted by a real ovation, and also mentioned by Gilles Petterson as one of the best things released last year year.
The network of artistic references for the Orchestra is impressive: The Ex, Stereolab, New Orleans fanfares, African polyrhythmic orchestras, minimalism and spiritual jazz.
But it is live that this collective, elastic and elusive, captures and captivates, shows off a miraculous creativity, especially in asphyxiated and suffocating times like these: irresistible rhythms, songs with a circular pace that grow in a riot of harmonies, timbres and colors, sharp, surreal and poetic texts, a blaze of sound that with inexorable precision moves and moves, dances and excites.