SIESTES MUSICALES

ÉTIENNE CHARY

If you happen to be outside Place des Arts during the lunch hour, you might want to catch forty winks as you fall under the musical spell of the enchanting Trous d’eau. That is the name given by the French sound alchemist Étienne Charry to his unusual music of underwater soundscapes that evoke the miniature marine worlds left between the rocks by the outgoing tide. Dozing in deckchairs at the heart of an oasis of greenery nestled in the shadows of the Musée d’art contemporain, you can catch some shut-eye to the sounds of Anémone, Flux de sel or Doigts de Neptune, low-volume melodies emanating from a number of transistor radios dispersed throughout the site like small shellfish strewn on the shore. Étienne Charry distributes them as the spirit moves him and, if so inclined, sometimes adds commentary, deliciously incongruous poetic remarks.