L'Achéron / François Joubert-Caillet

François Joubert-Caillet, viola da gamba and direction
Jean-Baptiste Henry, bandoneon 

Cabaret Bach explores these meeting places—cafés, salons, and cabarets—which, far from official settings, allowed artists to shake up the codes and challenge the conventions of their time. At the heart of this journey, the figure of Johann Sebastian Bach serves as a pivot: his music, sometimes frozen by history, rediscovers here the innovative energy it displayed at Café Zimmermann in Leipzig.

Carried by the unusual combination of the viola da gamba and the bandoneon, the program alternates between eras with confident audacity. The sacred rubs shoulders with the profane, creating a dialogue between the Enlightenment of the late Baroque period and the subversive melancholy of the
Schubertiades, the biting poetry of Erik Satie, and the swing of Django Reinhardt.

From the protest poetry of Bob Dylan to the revolutionary tango of Astor Piazzolla, each piece bears witness to an art form that is invented on the margins.

By combining the popular spirit of the bandoneon with the woody timbre of the viola, Cabaret Bach celebrates these areas of counterculture. Between the Old and New Worlds, this concert pays tribute to a living music that, from Berlin cabarets to literary cafés, has always chosen impertinence and pure emotion as its only compasses.