“The inner home is a reflection of our inner world. It’s a repository, a sanctuary, a safe place that needs neither windows, nor walls, or doors. A place to take shelter when needing to keep one’s integrity in the midst of the injunctions of this world. It’s also a space that vibrates, that resonates, and that seeks out what knows within us.
The resonance of my childhood home has left a deep impact on me, and it has always been part of me. I heard my father's string quartet rehearse tirelessly all day. Through the interpretation and the energy of the musicians, I could already perceive the intentions and the general mood, and also the notes, the phrasings in color by synesthesia. This created a constant sense of wonder in me.
The trials of life have led me to practice care, guidance and listening, to perceive how someone's home resonates, to enter into its resonance as one enters into the dance. With my instruments, I put myself on the same frequency to amplify the voices, to assess whether it’s necessary to clean up, to help vibrate what needs to emerge and grow. This practice gradually led me to create my own music therapy tool: maïeuphonie*.
*a therapeutic approach invented by Emmanuelle Parrenin, allowing her to give birth to all the voices that inhabit us and to seek the ones who have never had the right to speak.
Emmanuelle Parrenin has always been a collector of sounds: she learned music in a clandestine and instinctive way by reproducing on a piano the melodies she hears escaping from the various rehearsal rooms of the family home, where music resonates from everywhere: her father directs the Parrenin Quartet, and her mother is a harp teacher.
In the 1970s, she continued her unconventional relationship with music and sounds by going on the road, in France and Canada, to collect, with an audio recorder on her shoulder, tunes and traditional songs. She continues her exploration of the sounds of the past by rediscovering instruments then fallen into oblivion: the spruce, the hurdy-gurdy and later the harp, which she taught herself. It thus contributes to the emergence of the folk movement in France.
In 1978, she released “Maison rose”, her first solo album, which played with all borders and styles, and which constituted a turning point in her musical and artistic career. It combines ten years of folk journey and exploration of traditional sounds. She then collaborated with the Baschet brothers, Jacques Rémus and Bruno Menny (student of Xénakis).
In 1990, following a serious accident, she goes deaf. Modern medicine being powerless, she managed to heal by rehabilitating her ears through the sounds of her voice and the resonance of its instruments. Learning from this experience, she turned to healing music and music therapy and created Maïeuphonie, which she practiced for fifteen years in children’s institutes and psychiatric hospitals and teaches regularly at the International Center for Music Therapy.
The 2000s marked the return to experimental music and the song. She met many musicians around the collective-record label “Les Disques Bien”, with whom in 2011, thirty years after “Maison rose”, she recorded “Maison cube”. From there she meets electronic music and collaborates with artists like Etienne Jaumet, Vincent Segal, Pierre Bastien, Tomoko Sauvage, Didier Petit, or Zombie Zombie.
Tracklist:
Quatuor Parrenin - Quatuor à cordes in F Major, M. 35: II. Assez vif, très rythmé
Quatuor Parrenin - Quatuor à cordes in F Major, M. 35: III. Très lent
Emmanuelle Parrenin - Maison rose
Nest - Charlotte
Emmanuelle Parrenin joue de la vielle -
Emmanuelle Parrenin - Liturgie
Ryuichi Sakamoto & Alva Noto - First Dream
Eleh - Still, Not Waiting
Emmanuelle Parrenin - Puise
Colin - Lemniscat (ft. Emmanuelle Parrenin)
Emmanuelle Parrenin - Le son de ta voix
Biosphere - Kobresia
Emmanuelle Parrenin - Maison vide
Rod Modell - Untitled 01
Emmanuelle Parrenin - Targala
Oophoi - Hur (the beauty of the sky)
Emmanuelle Parrenin - Dulcimer
Robert Rich - Plasma
Instruments d’Emmanuelle -
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