Séverine Ballon
Séverine Ballon (France, 1980) is a composer and cellist. These two activities are mutually nurturing in the musical research she conducts. In her work as a performer, she favours collaborations with composers, in the intimacy of musical creation. She has premiered solos and concertos by Rebecca Saunders, Chaya Czernowin, Mauro Lanza, Philippe Leroux and Francesca Verunelli, among others.
She studied composition at the Musikhochschule in Freiburg with Johannes Schöllhorn and cello at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin and Lübeck with Joseph Schwab and Troels Svane.
Winner of the Luc Ferrari competition in 2019, in 2021 she composed the literary show Je suis honorée d’être née dans ta tête, based on texts by Babouillec. Her recent projects include a piece for cello and electronics for the Transit festival (Leuven, 2022), as well as a piece for cello and clarinet for the musicians Åsa Åkerberg and Shizuyo Oka (Ensemble Recherche).
She has composed two original scores for feature films by director João Pedro Rodrigues: L’Ornithologue (2016) and Où est cette rue? (2022), co-directed with João Rui Guerra da Mata. Her solo album Solitude was released on the Aeon/Outhere label and her first album as a composer, Inconnaissance, was released on the All That Dust label.
At the French Academy in Rome, her project brings together two research projects that have been carried out in parallel for several years: the first examines singing as memory, matter and state; the second focuses on encounters and sharing in the context of music workshops organised in places of reception and accommodation for disadvantaged people. The songs and stories collected during these workshops will give rise to a musical fresco that will question what differentiates singing from speaking.
Photo portrait © Daniele Molajoli
Video portrait © Laurent Perreau pour l’Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis