Sinaloa

What do the stars sound like? The Pleiades, suspended in the constellation of Taurus, inspire this scene in which six percussionists embody the lights visible to the human eye. Composer Iannis Xenakis translates his obsession with space into a sensory experience, orchestrating a vast array of woodwinds and metal instruments that create a true acoustic vault: a shower of stars cascading across the night sky.

Composed in 1978, Pléiades unfolds a timbral universe of almost mathematical rigour, divided into four parts whose titles refer to the materials used in the manufacture of the instruments, and to the sounds they produce: Pléiades I: Mélanges, performed simultaneously by various percussion instruments; Pléiades II: Métaux; Pléiades III: Claviers; and Pléiades IV: Peaux. The rich timber of the sixxen is, in a way, an expression of the different ways of life led by human beings, of which metals form an integral part.