The Acanthes Center for Contemporary Music will soon be launching its thirty second season and we are proud to be able to say that several generations of young gifted players have now been studying here year after year. All these students names can now be found at the top billing of most festivals and other international musical events. As for the location of the Center, now in its sixth year in the dynamic and fast becoming international City of Metz, 2010 will undoutedly be a milestone. In May 2010, Metz will see the official opening of the Centre Pompidou-Metz and it is naturally within the realm of this important international event that the July festival of the Center will take place this year. As a contribution to this event, the Center will hold a spectacular opening week end during which its classes, concerts and workshops will be held both at the Centre Pompidou-Metz and at the Arsenal. An important portion of the festival activities will be dedicated to computerized music. Also noteworthy is the presence this year of the prestigious IRCAM, a participation which the Festival is particularly grateful for as yet another proof of the international reach of the festival.

As is customarily prevalent every year at the Festival, the composers will once again take their righteously well deserved place; they will do this through their works of course but also through the presence of three outstanding composers. One of them, Tristan Murail, is already part of the Acanthes family for participating in the 1992 program which at
the time took place in Villeneuve-lez-Avignon. Tristan Murail will be accompanied by two first-rate musicians, whose works are also well-known throughout the world, except maybe in France: the Swiss composer, Hanspeter Kyburz, and the swiss-born composer Beat Furrer, who now resides in Austria.

In order to meet the expectations of the somewhat 80 interns whom we receive as guests students every year, we are happy to thank yet once again the great musicians of the Orchestre national de Lorraine for their wonderful work and talent on which we heavily rely; they will be led this year again in their delicate tasks by their chief conductor, Jacques Mercier, and the guest conductor, Jean Deroyer; also in attendance will be the Quatuor Diotima whose association with great composers of contemporary music translates into a real love story. The cello interpretation workshops and classes will be in especially good hands with the participation of the cellist Anssi Karttunen, who was our guest in 2000. Finally, our audiences will once again be able to notice that all our concerts will be marked by our tradition of continued demand for utmost
professionalism at the service of new works; in that respect, we are pleased to announce that the Ensemble Contrechamps will bring its special contribution to this year events.

“We have a duty towards music, it is to invent it”. This word, by Igor Stravinsky, is still true... C. S.