Eklekto Geneva Percussion Center

Biography

Eklekto is a contemporary percussion collective based in Geneva. Constantly seeking to reinvent percussion music, the group collaborates with living composers and contemporary artists through concerts, multimedia projects and artistic events that question the listener’s expectations towards new musical forms. Eklekto has premiered over 100 new works and performed hundreds of internationally acclaimed shows.

Created Under the visionary impulse of Swiss percussionist Pierre Métral in 1974, the group was first called CIP (international Percussion Centre), and became an important contemporary percussion center, building up collaborations with other percussion organizations like Kroumata, Amadinda, Les Percussions de Strasbourg among others. Over the years, the collective has worked with prestigious artistic directors : Steven Schick, William Blank, Jacques Ménétrey, Jean Geoffroy. Since 2011 The collective has taken the name Eklekto and has a flexible lineup of up to 20 percussionists.

Over the years, Eklekto has gathered a collection of percussion instruments of nearly 1000 pieces. This “instrumentarium” is constantly evolving and has become a unique creation tool for the musicians of Eklekto and the guest artists and composers.

Eklekto has premiered works of composers Ryoji Ikeda, Yoshihisa Taira, Stefano Gervasoni, Sven Åke Johannson, Pierre Jodlowski, Roland Dahinden, Thomas Meadowcroft, Thomas Kessler, Billy Martin and performed with guest musicians Etienne Jaumet, Fritz Hauser, Arturo Tamayo, Stefan Asbury, Synergy Percussion, Ensemble Contrechamps, Ensemble KNM Berlin amongst many others.

In its recent projects, Eklekto questions the conventional concert form with projects such as the trilogy Words & Percussion (Théâtre du Galpon, Geneva, 2014-2016), a contemporary Gamelan project (Archipel Festival, 2015), a cutting edge acoustic composition by electronic legend Ryoji Ikeda (Bâtie Festival, 2016) or the one-hour musical landscape Discount Minimal by composer Thomas Meadowcroft and visual artist Florian Bach (2017). 2018 will see the premiere of a new concert serie called Percussion works.

Since 2013, Swiss percussionist Alexandre Babel is Eklekto’s artistic director.
Eklekto est commanditaire d’une centaine d’œuvres pour percussion de compositeurs tels que Ryoji Ikeda, Thomas Meadowcroft, Yoshihisa Taira, Stefano Gervasoni, Pierre Jodlowski, William Blank, Sven-Åke Johansson, Thomas Kessler ou Billy Martin et s’est produit avec Fritz Hauser, Etienne Jaumet, Stefan Asbury, Arturo Tamayo, Synergy Percussion, Ensemble KNM Berlin.
Dans ses projets actuels, Eklekto questionne le format de concert de musique contemporaine à travers des propositions telles que la trilogie Words&Percussion/Théâtre du Galpon 2014-2016, le concert Gamelan/Festival Archipel 2015, le projet de concert-installation Discount minimal avec Thomas Meadowcroft (compositeur) et Florian Bach (plasticien)/Genève 2017. Eklekto est aussi depuis 2006 le créateur du festival biennal Batteries ! consacré à la batterie sous toutes ses formes.
Après Steven Schick et Jean Geoffroy, la direction artistique est assurée depuis 2013 par le percussionniste suisse Alexandre Babel.