Music, again and again!
14 May 2023
To celebrate the sea, an inexhaustible source of artistic inspiration and a call to freedom, The SeaCleaners is investing for the very first time in the field of classical music by joining forces with the Appassionato symphony orchestra, conducted by Mathieu Herzog. The result of this encounter? An exceptional recording project, "Mer(s)" - Sea(s) in stores in January 2024.
“Yes, the sea is everything. I love it! It covers seven tenths of the globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is the immense desert where man is never alone, for he feels life quivering beside him. Ah, sir, live, live within the seas. Only there is independence! There I know no masters; there I am free!”
From Jules Verne to Claude Monet, from Tennessee Williams to Hokusai, artists of all sensibilities and from all eras have dipped their pen or their brush in salt water. Whether they have passed into posterity or not, their works translate the strength of the emotions that overwhelm us when faced with the infinite space of the Ocean, as powerful as it is fragile.
In this fertile abundance, the musicians are not left out! Over the years, many of them have also drawn inspiration from the surf and the crashing of the waves. It is to exalt this creative power and the sea as a source of artistic inspiration that The SeaCleaners have joined the new recording project of the Appassionato symphony orchestra, called Mer(s) – Sea(s).
Mer(s) will be released in January 2024. A percentage of the record’s proceeds will be donated to The SeaCleaners to support its work to protect the oceans, both on land and at sea. i’m free!”
You can win!
The recording of the album will take place on 9 June 2023 at the Seine Musicale in Paris, the day after World Oceans Day. The SeaCleaners is offering to win invitations for 2 people to attend this exceptional concert. 10 tickets in total are to be won! Visit us on Instagram and Facebook to try to win and attend this unique event, alongside The SeaCleaners’ teams, volunteers and partners!
At the heart of the project
“At The SeaCleaners, our day-to-day work is to fight the threats to the oceans, most notably plastic waste pollution, and to explain why it is urgent and imperative to protect them. This is a fundamental mission and one that we will never cease to carry out. But sometimes, caught up in this commitment and in our indignation, we forget that the sea is not just an ecosystem devastated by human action! The sea is also and above all a source of beauty, dreams and wonder. It is an immense impulse, a call to freedom. It awakens the most noble in us. After all, that is what we are fighting to preserve. And it is this dimension that we wanted to celebrate through this recording project. We are very grateful to Appassionato for offering it to us.”
The shared desire of Appassionato and The SeaCleaners to convey a positive message about the Ocean and their common desire to involve the widest possible audience in this drive were the two triggers for the partnership.
Music is indeed an ideal vehicle to make as many people as possible feel this imperative call to love and protect the sea.
Appassionato’s artistic line is based on excellence for all. Not content with offering the public interpretations of symphonic masterpieces, the orchestra and its conductor make the greatest works of the repertoire available and easily accessible, thanks to innovative concert formats and a constant desire to reach out to all audiences.
This approach to democratising classical music has attracted The SeaCleaners, for whom mobilising and raising the awareness of the general public remain major levers for change.
Mer(s), ask for the programme!
Under the direction of conductor Mathieu Herzog, the Appassionato Mer(s) CD will feature four symphonic masterpieces dedicated to the sea and water:
- La Mer and an original arrangement of Claude Debussy’s Cathédrale Engloutie,
- Jean Cras’ unjustly overlooked Journal de Bord (the inventor of the Cras rule used in navigation)
- Paul Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (the symphonic poem that animates the wild dance of the broomsticks in Walt Disney’s Fantasia)
If the link between water and Debussy’s La Mer seems obvious, it is perhaps less so with the other three works: Jean Cras, who was a vice-admiral in the Navy, never ceased to travel the seas of the globe during his long career in the navy, but also to compose works on board his ship which, like Debussy’s, evoke the splendour of the oceans with all the talent of the impressionists.
La Mer and Journal de Bord thus exalt the beauty of the Big Blue, while L’Apprenti Sorcier and La Cathédrale engloutie deplore its ongoing devastation.
L’Apprenti Sorcier is about sorcery and the waste of water: the apprentice, too lazy to go to the spring himself to fetch the buckets that will be used to fill a large reservoir in his master’s laboratory, bewitches brooms to do the work for him. However, he does not manage to unbewitch them and the tank overflows, the waters invade his house, until the master returns and manages to break the spell. Although Dukas’s highly expressive work does not start out as a denunciation of the waste of water, it resonates particularly today, when the question of preserving this natural resource is becoming central to our relationship with the world.
The Cathédrale engloutie, for its part, seems to be an allegory, as terrifying as it is sublime, of the submergence of many parts of the globe that will result from rising water levels if we do nothing to stop the climate change that is underway.
In the age of the Anthropocene, there will be many sunken cathedrals that Appassionato intends to echo from the depths.