A Swiss-Japanese project said Tuesday that it is building a mobile concert hall which would bring music and performance arts back to earthquake-devastated northern Japan.

"/> A Swiss-Japanese project said Tuesday that it is building a mobile concert hall which would bring music and performance arts back to earthquake-devastated northern Japan.

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Swiss help bring music to Japan quake zone

A Swiss-Japanese project said Tuesday that it is building a mobile concert hall which would bring music and performance arts back to earthquake-devastated northern Japan.

Published: 10 August 2011 16:43 CEST
Swiss help bring music to Japan quake zone

“Using music to bring hope and promise to those who are suffering from the tragic major earthquake in Japan on March 11, 2011: this is the idea and goal of a special project entitled Ark Nova — A Tribute to Higashi Nihon,” it said.

Launched by the Lucerne Festival and the Japanese concert management agency Kajimoto, the project hired architect Arata Isozaki to work with British artist Anish Kapoor to design the mobile hall.

With a seating capacity of up to 700, the concert hall would comprise an inflatable shell made with an elastic material that can be dismantled and set up rapidly.

An artistic committee has also been formed to plan the series of performances which are due to begin in the spring of 2012.

“Its obvious that we cant undo all the terrible pain and suffering, but through music and art we want to give the people in the region new hope and promise,” said Michael Haefliger, executive director of the Lucerne Festival.

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CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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