From 2012 to 2014, I had the chance to work with the writer Tanguy Viel on the opera Les Pigeons d'argile, which the Théâtre du Capitole had commissioned from me. Since then, we have maintained a very strong intellectual, artistic and friendly relationship. So we came up with the idea of working together again, but on a completely different project. It consists of seven „musical situations“ – like miniatures or paintings – each of which is linked to a city that Tanguy has influenced a lot. The texts he has written, seven poems, refer to the Chinese satori, to the feeling of quasi-spiritual wonder that these cities evoked in him. Tanguy has just returned from a long trip around the world, most of which he undertook on a cargo ship, and he would like to share the strong impressions of the cities he experienced with us here. The music is written for an ensemble consisting of the trio K/D/M – an accordionist and two percussionists – and Alain Billard, a virtuoso clarinettist, accompanied by the voice of Elise Chauvin, a soprano but also an actress. As far as the treatment of the voice is concerned, we are moving away completely from what we have done for opera. Here it is a voice that says the texts without speaking or really singing, an in-between that has nothing to do with Sprechgesang, but is the result of working with Elise Chauvin based on a restricted set of sounds. and playing modes that we have developed based on the text. The piece, about 30 minutes long, is therefore both a kind of travel diary and an expression of the „spiritual awakening“ that the places visited by Tanguy Viel were able to emit.