TRAFFIC QUINTET CONCERT
The taste of cinema and the female scent overwhelmed Aristotle University’s Ceremony Hall on Sunday, November 15, on the occasion of the «Divine Feminin» performance by Dominique Lemonnier’s string quintet Traffic Quintet, in the framework of TIFF’s parallel events. Present at the concert was internationally acclaimed music composer Alexandre Desplat, artistic director of the “Divine Feminin” performance. Prior to the concert, Desplat said he felt moved by the fact that he returned after many years in Greece, the country where his grandfather came as a refugee from Smyrna in 1922, noting that he considers this multinational heritage as his personal treasure.
During the “Divine Feminin” performance, the Traffic Quintet rendered film music pieces composed by Alexandre Desplat (Birth), Bernard Herrmann (Fahrenheit 451, Psycho, Vertigo), Jerry Goldsmith (Basic Instinct, Chinatown), Alex North (The misfits), Philip Glass (The hours), Air (The Virgin Suicides), Gabriel Yared (Camille Claudel) and Pascal Dusapin (Medea). The music performance highlighted the dominant personalities of the lead actresses in these movies: Legendary women, each in her own way, of both the past (like Marilyn Monroe, Jean Moreau and Ingrid Bergman) and the present (Fay Dunaway, Helen Mirren, Isabelle Adjani, Sharon Stone, Nicole Kidman). The performance was brilliantly complemented by French photographer and director Ange Leccia’s videos, which deal with the femme fatale, and the search for the ideal type of the perennial female.
The Traffic Quintet was established in order to render the music composed by Alexandre Desplat for Jacques Odiar’s film Un hero tres discret. The music ensemble consists of lead violinist Dominique Lemonier and musicians Anne Villette (violin), Estelle Villotte (alto), Raphael Perraud (violoncello) and Philippe Noharet (double bass). The Traffic Quintet has performed in famous venues in New York, Paris and Rome and was also invited to perform during the opening ceremony of the 60th Cannes Festival in 2007.
