about
MIKROKOSMOS
Strong advocate of the French choral arts, and often described as a troublemaker, Mikrokosmos has been offering exceptional a capella sound colors, nourished with uncommon artistic adventures, for 30 years. Supported by a troupe of 40 young singers, crowned with 20 international prizes, Mikrokosmos as a "choral arts' laboratory" cultivates boldness.
The multidisciplinary approach of its creator, Loïc Pierre, quickly put Mikrokosmos "on stage". With original creations blending influences and previously unseen references, the choir dissolves the borders between arts: concert-films, hip-hop dance, video installation and antique tragedy, profoundly bound to singing, compile the singular picture of today's choral arts.
Several tendencies bring colour to Mikrokosmos's path: an exceptional commission policy deployed since its early years, the prestigious and fertile ground of the Scandinavian repertoire, the beautiful story of the Baltic people, but also the American flamboyance and the Asian insolence, carve the choir's sound and strengthen a repertoire which combines great contemporary choral pages and a capella creations.
With Mikrokosmos, the stage is set alight, choral arts crackle and open to all audiences. Within 30 years, without any aesthetics border nor stiffen chapel, the choir's palette has significantly expanded while preserving its unalterable base: languages' spreading, rhythmical fever and incandescent harmonies linked to a powerful metaphorical incarnation, now forge Mikrokosmos's signature to serve a capella choral arts.
LOÏC PIERRE
Creator and artistic director of the Mikrokosmos Chamber Choir since 1989, Loïc Pierre is a choir director, stage director, scenographer, composer and plastic artist. Always in search for originality, he draws his influences from Sam Francis, Ariane Mnouchkine, Jackson Pollock, Andrei Tarkovski, Bob Wilson, Alfred Hitchcock and Martin Scorsese.
Emancipated from the unalterable ritual of concerts, he offers another ceremony and thus invents a choral theatre serving a renewed and perfectly modern art. His shows are the testimony of this claimed fusion: Tenebrae (2001), Ombres vives, une autre histoire du cinéma (Keen Shadows, another cinema's history, 2006), La Nuit Dévoilée (Unveiled Night, 2013), Retour à la terre (Back to earth, 2014), Jumala (2016), Chroniques des peuples oubliés (Forgotten people's chronicles, 2018) L’Origine du Monde (The World's Origin, 2019), Rituel (Ritual, 2020), profound and singular works, modern and perfectly handled by an innovative artist, generous towards his audience; the humble and sincere architect of the masters whose works he performs.
Loïc Pierre is also the artistic director of the Festival de la Voix (Voice Festival), Châteauroux, France.
MYRIAM DE ARANJO
Myriam de Aranjo studied singing with Christiane Patard, teacher at the Paris CNSMD (National Superior Conservatoire of Music and Dance) and completed her training in Italy with the maestro Gino Becchi in Florence, and Arrigo Pola (Luciano Pavarotti and Mirela Ferni's teacher) in Modene. In France as well, with Beatrice Burley and Lucia di Carlo.
She has a professional chorister career and performed in many French lyrical theatres: the Châtelet in Paris, Strasbourg, Nancy, Metz, Nantes, Tours… Myriam de Aranjo has been teaching the art of singing for 34 years. Today, within her associative structure La Fabrique du Chanteur (The Singer's Factory), she trains beginners as well as affirmed amateurs, professionalising young people and professionals.
She is preparing a new generation of artists for concerts and entrance exams to the Grandes Ecoles, and has been teaching vocal technique within the Mikrokosmos choir since 2008.
ADAM HARRATA
Adam Harrata is a lyric singer and choir director. Currently studying at the Conservatoire of Strasbourg (France), he studies the tenor and countertenor register with Jean-Noël Briend and Monika Mauch. He trained as a choir director with Jean-Philippe Billmann.
In 2020, he spent a year in Norway where he discovered Norwegian music and contemporary creation. During this year, he took part in the Kammerkoret Aurum where he is the assistant conductor with Eva Holm Foosnæs. The musical effervescence in which he begins his Norwegian journey makes him discover a music that blurs the boundaries between classical, jazz, contemporary and pop music. This is what drives him to integrate Mikrokosmos in order to serve contemporary creation with a new definition of choral art.
He is currently one of the three musical assistants of the conductor Loïc Pierre.
MARIANNE BELIJAR
It is through piano and choral singing that Marianne Bélijar explored music at the age of 7 and then turned to the visual arts.
At the age of 24, shaken by the Fukushima disaster, she left to reconnect with her Japanese roots on a two-year initiatory trip to the playful island of Okinawa. On her return, she joined the lyric singing class of Sylvie Sullé as a soprano while training in the performing arts with Sophie Fontaine and the somatic practices of the conservatories of Paris, notably in Functional Analysis of the Body in the Dance Movement with Catherine Augé.
She discovers her passion for free dance in the class of Nadia Vadori-Gauthier and is interested in the body of the performer, in search of freedom through movement, by the experience sensitive to oneself and the world, freed from dominant models of representation.
She joined the Mikrokosmos Choir in 2017 where she finally found a bridge between singing, theatre and dance and took over from Hélène Gendek in 2021 with the workshop of «Corps Poétique» in collaboration with Suzie Ripoche.
SUZIE RIPOCHE
Born to a musician father and an actress mother, living art has always been at the centre of Suzie’s life. She takes singing lessons from a young age in music school and discovers her love of the stage in high school.
She doesn't thrive in conservatories and therefore decides to train with private teachers. She met Myriam De Aranjo, Mikrokosmos' vocal coach, in 2018. She invites her to go see «The Night Unveiled» and the crush is immediate for Suzie. She joined the Choir at the end of 2018.
She also sings in several other vocal ensembles and artistic projects that combine music, dance, theatre and poetic writing.
Today, Suzie is also studying theatre with Agnès Jobert and dance with Nicolas Irurzun in Nantes (France).
In the summer 2021, she became staging assistant and took over from Hélène Gendeck on the «Corps Poétique» workshops with Marianne Belijar. She finds a fertile space to deepen the body’s work in space or stage presence, reinforcing her sensitivity and passion for the performing arts.