2023
VIVANTO is executive producer of the art festival Chants libres choral.
“For the 2023 edition of Chants libres, the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation has come up with an ambitious festival. Nearly 50 musical events will be staged in five regions of France on the weekend of June 23rd, featuring not only the most prestigious ensembles, but also amateur and school choirs.
Chants libres remains true to the Foundation’s long-standing commitment to choral singing, which aims to promote the practice of choral singing to an ever-wider audience, and to highlight its benefits. Personal development and encounters; a precious vector for social mixing and solidarity.
For many choirs, it was a wonderful message of hope in the darkest of times. Organized in the spring of 2020, after weeks of confinement and in compliance with the sanitary regulations of the time, the first edition of the Chants libres festival (then called Ensemble, enchantons l’été®) offered them the opportunity to sing together again and meet up with their audience. The Foundation repeated the initiative in 2021. Now, on the strength of a very positive balance sheet, it intends to adapt Chants libres to the renewed context of a musical life that has resumed its course. It is therefore proposing a new annual event for the choral singing sector.
For the 2023 edition, Chants libres will bring together five leading professional choirs (all winners of the Prix Liliane Bettencourt for choral singing and accredited by the French Ministry of Culture as Centers of Vocal Art), children’s choirs and amateur ensembles to perform on the weekend of June 23, 2023. A date carefully chosen in the wake of the Fête de la Musique, to take advantage of the first signs of summer and a rich cultural period.
Taking up the values and philosophy of previous editions, this festival is resolutely placed under the sign of freedom. Freedom for the artists, who will once again be able to forge new relationships with their audiences by initiating multiple forms of sharing – concerts, musical moments, but also masterclasses enabling them to reach out to everyone. Freedom for the public, who are invited to take part in almost 50 musical events organized across five major regions of France, including territories farthest from cultural centers and disadvantaged or vulnerable populations.
To give this event a new dimension, the Foundation asked composer Franck Krawczyk to imagine an anthem for Chants libres. An adaptation of Verdi’s Nabucco, it is now the symbol of the event, and will be sung in Paris and the surrounding regions, this year and in future editions. It’s the perfect way to sign off this choral art festival by reminding us of the universal benefits of music. A source of joy, sharing and solidarity.
Find out more about the program in Ile-de-France
Find out more about the program in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté
Find out more about the program in Occitanie
