Trio Polycordes
VOYAGE DANS LA LUNE
From Méliès to Fleischer, TrioPolycordes brings silent cinema to life through shimmering strings, electronics and bold new musical visions.
PROGRAMME
Yingting Liu
The Remedy* (2026), 7’, for mandolin, guitar and harp.
A new score for The Remedy (2017) by Zilai Feng. Composed as part of NIMAcademy under the mentorship of Anna Rice.
Elham Hamedi
New Work* (2026), 7’, for oboe, electric guitar and double bass.
A new score for Arabesques (1929) by Germaine Dulac. Composed as part of NIMAcademy under the mentorship of Felicity Wilcox.
Martin MatalonA Trip to the Moon* (2026), 13’, for guitar, harp and mandolin, based on the film by Georges Méliès. Commissioned by TrioPolycordes.
Mechanical Doll* (2026), 7’, for solo harp and electronics, based on a short film from Max Fleischer’s Out of the Inkwell series. Commissioned by TrioPolycordes.
Invisible Ink* (2026), 7’30”, for solo mandocello and electronics, based on a short film from Max Fleischer’s Out of the Inkwell series. Commissioned by TrioPolycordes.
Trip to Mars* (2026), 8’, for solo electric guitar and electronics, based on a short film from Max Fleischer’s Out of the Inkwell series. Commissioned by TrioPolycordes.
The Cook* (2026), 20’, for harp, mandolin, mandocello, acoustic guitar, electric guitar and electronics, based on the medium-length film by Roscoe Arbuckle, featuring Buster Keaton and Al St. John. Commissioned by TrioPolycordes.
Performers
Florentino Calvo: mandolinJean-Marc Zvellenreuther: guitarSandrine Chatron: harp
With the participation of the Centre Henri Pousseur, Liège.
Total duration: 70 minutes
VOUAGE DANS LA LUNE*
With Voyage dans la lune, the NIMFA Festival invites audiences on a journey through more than a century of moving images, from the enchanting inventions of early cinema to contemporary visual forms. At the heart of the programme, Martin Matalon’s new score for Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon (1902) breathes new life into one of the most iconic films in cinema history.
Performed by TrioPolycordes, the score brings mandolin, guitar and harp into dialogue with Méliès’s fantastical universe. The precision of the plucked strings, their delicate resonances and percussive energy accompany the film’s transformations, apparitions and visual illusions without merely illustrating them. Music becomes a vehicle for travel in its own right, extending the wonder of the screen and revealing its hidden rhythms.
The journey continues with two works composed as part of NIMAcademy 2026. In The Remedy, for mandolin, guitar and harp, Yingting Liu offers a new musical interpretation of Zilai Feng’s film of the same name, created under the mentorship of Anna Rice. Elham Hamedi presents a new score for oboe, electric guitar and double bass inspired by Germaine Dulac’s Arabesques (1929). Composed under the mentorship of Felicity Wilcox, the work weaves together breath, electric resonance and the depth of the strings with the film’s abstract movements.
From Méliès’s cosmic fantasy to Germaine Dulac’s visual arabesques and the contemporary cinema of Zilai Feng, the concert explores different ways in which sound and image can enter into dialogue. Here, music does more than accompany the films: it illuminates and transforms them, opening a new realm of imagination behind every screen.
*A TRIP TO THE MOON