This project links the images from a particular period in the history of cinema, by American director and Hollywood pioneer Cecil B. DeMille, to the cutting edge new music of the Orchestre National de Jazz. Daniel Yvinec sets out to showcase the compositional talent of his orchestra members, entrusting each of them with a different scene from the film. The ensuing original soundtrack will reflect both their creative work and also the spontaneous interventions of Benoît Delbecq. This goldsmith of the prepared piano and poet of the sampling keyboard will bring contrast and relief to the different musical tableaux. Working together on a common score, sometimes dense and complex, sometimes spare and minimal, is a new way to emphasise the unique narrative power of the image. And thanks to special lighting and staging, the musicians themselves will be present, sometimes in the foreground, sometimes in the background, offering spectators different viewpoints and allowing them to travel between music and image as they wish, until the two become one in a spellbinding sensory experience. In addition, the presence of singer / flamenco guitarist Bernardo Sandoval (whose own original soundtrack for Emmanuel Poirier's Western won him a Best Music César in 1998) will add a vision both removed from yet rooted in the Carmen myth, as seen through the surprising colours of the orchestra.


Photograph © Stéphane Sednaoui, model Natasa Vojnovic