In this new show, Aedes exploits what has always made the ensemble’s distinguishing feature: its ability to explore all repertoires, whatever the style or period, and its desire to draw them together in original new programmes. Here Aedes invites Japanese martial artist and actor-singer Masato Matsuura to join them at the frontier between choral singing and Nō dance-drama.

Despite the clichés we hear about it, Nō is a subtle art form in which drama, singing and dance are mingled. With the addition of Masato Matsuura’s sword fighting, Nō becomes a kind of initiation: the sword slices and opens, symbolizing both the end and a beginning.

Mathieu Romano and stage director Pier Lamandé have conceived an original plot based on the Five Elements of Japanese culture, in which a man (Masato Matsuura) retires from his fellow men (the choir) in order to return to them as a better person. One after the other he consults earth, water, fire, wind, void and plenitude with his question: what is my place in this world?

This programme in five acts in based around a selection of vocal masterpieces: Veljo Tormis’s Fire Incantation, a shamanic piece which uses sword dancing to induce a trance ; Schubert’s famous Song of the spirits over the water and The hurdy-gurdy man from Winterreise (Winter Journey) ; the choral version of Mahler’s Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen ; Johann Hermann Schein’s motet Die mit Tränen säen… The voices of Aedes’s singers and the Nō actor meet and exchange, the ensemble borrowing from Yokyoku while Masato Matsuura helps himself to some Western choral repertoire from his place within the choir.