FESTIVAL UN TEMPS POUR ELLES
Do you know of any women composers?
Created in 2020 by cellist Héloïse Luzzati, the Festival Un Temps pour Elles has been based in the Val d’Oise since 2021. Its mission is to introduce all audiences to the repertoire of women composers, past and present. Every year in June, the Festival brings together some fifty of France’s most prestigious artists (David Kadouch, Célia Oneto Bensaid, Jean-Frédéric Neuburger, Raphaëlle Moreau, Vanessa Wagner, Julie Depardieu…) for ten to fifteen concerts in the district’s finest heritage sites: Abbaye de Maubuisson, Château de la Roche-Guyon, Domaine de Villarceaux…
Hosted by the Cité des Compositrices, the Festival Un Temps pour Elles serves as its artistic laboratory. Throughout the season, the Cité des Compositrices finds rare scores and manuscripts in libraries and archives all around the world. These rediscovered works are then sight-read by a group of prestigious musicians (Héloïse Luzzati, Célia Oneto Bensaid, Marielou Jacquard, Fiona McGown, Léa Hennino, Adèle Charvet, Alexandre Pascal, Raphaëlle Moreau, Violaine Despeyroux…) before being performed on stage during the Festival. Each year, around a third of the pieces that are performed were previously unrecorded. Some of them have not been performed for several centuries, and the scores are still handwritten!
OUR STORY
From the Festival Un Temps pour Elles
to the Cité des Compositrices
2025
The Festival Un Temps pour Elles celebrates its fifth edition in the Val d’Oise with thirteen concerts and a major educational project involving a hundred students from six conservatories. The supporting structure takes the name Cité des Compositrices and launches its own sheet music publishing house, La Boîte à Pépites Publishing, which sells its first printed scores.
2024
The Festival Un Temps pour Elles attracts more than a thousand spectators to the Val d’Oise and welcomes its first jazz concert: Mary Lou Williams’ Zodiac Suite. The Jardin Féérique Advent Calendar joins forces with the Musée d’Orsay to combine painting and music – the pieces are performed on stage during a concert at the Philharmonie de Paris. The La Boîte à Pépites label publishes the latest volumes of the Rita Strohl project, which are internationally acclaimed.
2023
The Festival Un Temps pour Elles explores new venues such as the Château d’Ecouen. For the first time, it hosts a choir concert with Clémence de Grandval’s Stabat Mater. The Festival also presents an exceptional concert designed around Diglee’s anthology of women poets Je serai le feu. For the first time, the Advent Calendar is broadcast on streaming platforms throughout the year. The Cité des Compositrices launches a concert season at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Philharmonie de Paris.
2022
The Festival Un Temps pour Elles attracts over six hundred spectators to the Casino d’Enghien-les-Bains for a concert with Renaud Capuçon. The La Boîte à Pépites label is launched with a first monograph dedicated to Charlotte Sohy, which is met with immediate success.
2021
Despite the COVID restrictions, the Festival Un Temps pour Elles takes up residence in the Val d’Oise thanks to the support of the district’s president, Marie-Christine Cavecchi. For the first time, concerts are held at Abbaye de Maubuisson, Abbaye de Royaumont and Domaine de Villarceaux. The video channel La Boîte à Pépites broadcasts the first episodes of the “Compositrices dessinées” series.
2020
In February, the video channel La Boîte à Pépites is launched, followed by the first edition of the Festival Un Temps pour Elles in the summer. The first Advent Calendar is presented online from December 1st to 25th.
