A major representative of the Italian school, a school that has so particularly marked musical creation over the past half century will be the guest composer for the thirty-second session of Acanthes: Salvatore Sciarrino. Author of prodigious work, affecting a variety of fields and exploring new avenues, particularly in the field of opera, Salvatore Sciarrino will deliver, during the two weeks of our academy, enthralling and even unexpected messages to the young musicians who choose each year the path to Acanthes, and gather in Metz, our city of residence since 2004.

Next July, composition workshops will still constitute the core of our activity and will benefit from the active presence of the Orchestre National de Lorraine. A third composition workshop, conducted by Sylvio Gualda, will stimulate the imagination of our young trainees, confronting the two pianos-percussion ensemble, developed in the history of modern music since the time of Bartók. Two interpretation workshops will renew a very fruitful collaboration with flautist Mario Caroli and will host for the first time, the professional singer Sonia Turchetta. Other Messines arrivals that we welcome: composers Fabio Nieder and Michèle Reverdy, Diego Masson, key-person in respect of the direction of new works, and Zsolt Nagy, who, throughout the Acanthes 2007 - Grande Région, worked magnificently last year in Luxembourg. Lectures will complement our educational landscape, enriched, as every year, with a series of public concerts.

The Messine adventure continues to grow, firmly entrenched in this beautiful place that is the Arsenal, bonded, and even more so in 2008, with the Conservatoire of regional influence, supported by the City of Metz, the département de la Moselle, the Région Lorraine and prestigious national institutional partners, whose loyalty is undeniable. Here is built, through its utopias, its constraints, its ambiguities and contradictions, the music of tomorrow - that is the music of today.