The Hopper Ensemble arose from the desire of young musicians of the Liège Conservatory to perform and circulate the music of their entourage.

Gibellina is a small Sicilian town known for its contemporary architecture, which was built as a bandage after the devastating earthquake of 1968. The abandoned site of the old city was replaced by a Land Art masterpiece by Alberto Burri, the Grande Cretto, built between 1985 and 1989. It is a monumental work, for which the artist imagined a huge pour of white cement falling down the side of the mountain. Large trenches have been built, following the layout of the streets of the old city, allowing visitors to move around within this white labyrinth. In 2007, this concrete labyrinth with Minotaurian proportions was the surreal setting for the intimate choreographies by Manuela Rastaldi, rendered in a beautiful setting wrapped in Thierry De Mey's images in "Sicilia: Life of Gibellina", whose aesthetic, so characteristic, leaves you speechless. In 2018, 50 years after the earthquake, Stéphane Orlando composes a new music on an 18-minute version of Thierry De Mey's film for the Hopper Ensemble, to magnify the creative impulse of artists, ever stronger to overcome devastating disasters, whether natural or human in origin!

As part of our residency at the Liège Conservatory, we are happy to work with the composition class of Michel Fourgon, Jean-Yves Colmant and Gilles Gobert and to serve young composers with whom we collaborate for a year.

“H#1 | 2 | 3 | 4” écrit pour l’Ensemble Hopper, est un voyage extatique au travers des vagues submergeantes, puissantes, quelque peu psychédéliques, de sons qui fleurissent à l’infini et de textures qui s’élèvent de manière obsessionnelle.