EN FANFARE (The Marching Band)
EN FANFARE
(The Marching Band)
Director
Emmanuel Courcol
Original music
Michel Petrossian
Label Plaza
Mayor Company Ltd
Selection
Cannes Premiere
Thibaut is an internationally renowned conductor who travels
the world. When he learns that he has been adopted, he discovers the existence
of a brother, Jimmy, a school canteen employee who plays the trombone in a
brass band in the north of France. Apparently, everything separates them,
except the love of music. Detecting his brother's exceptional musical
abilities, Thibaut makes it his mission to right the injustice of fate. Jimmy
then begins to dream of another life...
« EN FANFARE »
By Michel Petrossian –
Composer, Orchestrator
"En fanfare" is above
all the story of two brothers who are separated by everything despite a common
origin. And it is "musically" that Emmanuel Courcol has sought to
bring them together. Thibaut Désormeaux is a Parisian conductor and composer
with an international career. Jimmy Lecocq works in a school canteen and plays
the trombone in the brass band of Walincourt, a small fictional town in the
North.
The film's music is a
reflection of a plural world, where the barriers between genres and audiences
no longer form watertight partitions. First of all, there is the great world of
classical music, which is that of Thibaut Désormaux. She opens and closes the
film, with Beethoven's Egmont Overture and Ravel's Bolero. We also hear Mozart's
Concerto 23, Mendelssohn's The Hebrides...
Then there is the world of brass bands and bands, that of Jimmy Lecocq,
the younger brother, represented by the Triumphal March of Aida or When the
Saints Sing... The brothers finally discover that they have in common not only
perfect pitch, but also creative fibre. Thus, Quadrature is a contemporary and
demanding symphonic work, which we see Thibaut composing and which will be
performed at the Seine Musicale, in the final scene of the film. Jimmy also
composes, and the credits of the film are saValse pour Thibaut written for his
brother and present on the record in orchestral form solo piano and concert
band.
Between these three musical centres –
classical, brass band and creation – there are bridges, such as jazz or French
song. Bridges also between the professional and amateur worlds.
Whether the workers of a
factory appropriate Ravel's Bolero, inspired in part by the mechanical rhythm
of the nascent industry, that a classical musician rediscovers the human
dimension in popular music, that the exchange on musical language between a
professional and an amateur allows us to travel from Verdi to jazz – all this
makes "En fanfare" bear an essential societal question on living
together that goes far beyond the framework of entertainment.
A musical fable against a
backdrop of social determinism, "En fanfare" seeks a space for
fraternal sharing and mutual discovery through the universal language of music,
which connects two foreign but complementary worlds. In this sense, the final
choral scene, which unites symphony orchestra, brass band and audience in the
same spirit, suggests that the amateur musical practices that irrigate the less
privileged territories can claim the same title of nobility as "great music".
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