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labelnews_title[0] = "Hughes de Courson";
labelnews_id[0] = "1643527";
labelnews_text[0] = "Hughes de Courson spent his childhood years in Spain, and was later brought up in Paris. He wrote his first songs sitting at a desk in the Henri IV School in Paris, together with future novelist Patrick Modiano. Several of these songs were sung by Françoise Hardy, and others by Régine or Hugues Auffray.<br /><br /><br />In 1973, with Gabriel Yacoub, Hughes de Courson founded the group Malicorne that very successfully paved the way for a new musical trend of folk music from all over Europe. A few years later he set up his own label “Ballon Noir” and signed a large number of artists such as Dan Ar Braz, Kolinda, Akendengué and La Bamboche. After Malicorne broke up, ten years after its debut, Hughes de Courson started working on a series of compositions for choreographers: 22 pieces for Philippe Decoufflé, Karine Saporta, François Raffinot, José Besprosvany, Marceline Lartigue and others.<br /><br /><br />In 1992 he was awarded the Leonardo da Vinci Prize, which granted him a bursary from the French Foreign Ministry. This gave him the opportunity to travel around the Mediterranean for three years, taking him to Egypt, Israel, Yemen, Syria, Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania and Macedonia. The tour enabled him to compose and bring to performance an oratorio for 150 Arab and Classical musicians. “Yam” was presented in 1993 in Nazareth and Jerusalem, and later performed at the Cairo Opera, with his group Spondo and Nouba Beshtakeia. In 1994 Hughes de Courson wrote the music for the opening ceremony of the Mediterranean Olympic Games (which was staged by Jérôme Savary) and composed the CD Lambarena with Pierre Akendengué. <br /><br /><br />In 1997 he composed Mozart in Egypt (with Nasredine Dalil), released world-wide on Virgin Classics. Lambarena and Mozart in Egypt featured in major concert halls at the Marseilles Festival and the Abbey of Saint Denis. In 1999, along with Songs of Innocence (also on Virgin Classics), Hughes de Courson wrote “Lagrimas de Cera” for the flamenco singer El Lebrijano, and composed the music for the musical “Belle à mourir” (to a text by Thomas Buntzig), which was staged in Brussels in September. In 2000, Hughes de Courson produced “Ilmatar” by the Finnish group “Värttina”, and in 2001, “Maren” for the Basque accordionist Kepa Junkera. Autumn 2001 saw the release, again on Virgin Classics, in the same cross-over trend as Lambarena and Mozart in Egypt, of O’Stravaganza, a “Fantasy on Vivaldi and the Celtic music of Ireland”. And in 2003, after having released Lux Obscura, an ‘electro-mediaeval’ album, inspired by sacred music of the 12th century, Hughes de Courson composed the music to Philippe Découflé’s show’ Tricodex’, performed at the Opéra de Lyon, the Théâtre du Châtelet, in Paris, and later toured in the USA. In 2005, Hughes de Courson released on Virgin Classics a sequel to the best-seller Mozart in Egypt, and has recently been commissioned to write rearrangements on the national anthem of Qatar.<br />";
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