SEXTET “LE PARI DES BRETELLES”

accordion and string quintet

with the Quatuor Hermès and Édouard Macarez

« It was a crazy wager imagining the accordion carving out its place across all musical styles, places and aesthetics. This is nevertheless the challenge embraced by these generations of instrumentalists to whom we are heir. Le Pari des Bretelles is both a tribute to the history of our instrument and a challenge for its future, the challenge to combine its bellows with the bowed strings of five fabulous musicians for its true colours to shine once again where least expected… »


To mix musette and classical music…

Félicien Brut joins the famous Quatuor Hermès and the double bass player Édouard Macarez for a program conceived to measure by Thibault Perrine. Crossing borders, mixing styles, multiplying encounters, they take us on a journey through the last century, sometimes dazzling with virtuosity, sometimes heartbreaking with melancholy.

The project and the concert are named after Paris where the musette (and the ball of the same name) was born. But Félicien Brut and his friends are not limited to the Bastille or Ménilmontant. Surrounded by strings, the accordion plays works by Gershwin, Prokofiev, Piazzolla, Brel, Richard Galliano and, of course, Thibault Perrine, composer of Suite Musette, a piece inspired by the musette repertoire and commissioned specifically for this program.

Immediate success

Not only does Le Pari des Bretelles bring back to life a part of French musical heritage, revealing the Parisian spirit of the Roaring Twenties and an unprecedented cultural mix, but it also proves that the accordion remains an inexhaustible source of inspiration.

Since its premiere in September 2017 at the Seine Musicale, the show has not stopped touring. From the Zygel Academy on France 2 to the Folle Journée de Nantes, from the Flâneries Musicales de Reims to the Festival Classique au Vert, from Japan to Russia via Italy, Germany or Israel, it can be said that the Pari des Bretelles has met with immense success all over the world.

An eponymous album, praised by the critics, was released in January 2019, under the Mirare label.


The Program

subject to change

Petite Suite française
by Richard Galliano

Overture on Jewish Themes
by Sergueï Prokofiev
arrangement by Thibault Perrine

Un Américain à Paris
by George Gershwin
arrangement by Thibault Perrine

Milonga del Angel
extract from La Suite de l’Ange
by Astor Piazzolla
arrangement by Thibault Perrine

Tango pour Claude
by Richard Galliano
(duet accordion and double bass)

Valses de Paris
arrangement by Claude Thomain and Eric Bouvelle
(solo accordion)

Suite Musette
suite in five movements, created in 2017
by Thibault Perrine