The partners of the TotalEnergies corporate Foundation share their experience: Le Concert de la Loge
Julien CHAUVIN - Conductor, Le Concert de la Loge
What can you tell us about your association?
I’m a violinist and conductor and I direct Le Concert de la Loge, an orchestra with which I give concerts throughout the year. We give recitals and also perform baroque and classical music operas. Our aim as artists is of course to convey our passion to as many people as possible.
What’s your commitment to youth?
Today, artists have to ask themselves questions about what they are passing on, about the purpose of our profession. For us, it’s about playing music and sharing it with an audience. Young people are at the heart of this process, as they will be our audience in the future, and the values we want to pass on to young people include listening, punctuality, high standards, other people’s wellbeing - and those are all things you find in a collective performance.
What’s your project with TotalEnergies Foundation?
In the midst of all the projects we run with Le Concert de la Loge, recordings, concerts, tours and so on, there’s a project we created about 10 years ago, called Hip Baroque Choc. Hip refers to hip-hop, Baroque, to the music we play from the early 18th Century, and Choc because it’s a real culture clash between the two worlds. The project gives over a hundred young people the opportunity to express themselves on stage, something they never do in their daily lives: give a recital, dance, mix music, do body tap, with professional musicians in a grand end-of-year show. This year, Hip Baroque Choc will bring together over 200 students from the Ile-de-France and Hauts-de-France.
Can you sum up “Creating partnerships” in a few words?
We see eye-to-eye with TotalEnergies Foundation on many points and values. For example giving access to all cultures, whether people are from a baroque music or hip-hop background. It’s about how we manage to juxtapose these two things. It’s also about promoting professional courses, CAP apprenticeships, vocational baccalaureates - it’s very important to give all these young people confidence and put them center stage. The program also enables us to gain the students’ loyalty and stop them dropping out of school, so that we can support them throughout the year and they can be proud of creating and staging a show at the end of the year. With recent support from TotalEnergies Foundation, we have managed to consolidate the foundations on which we had built this project, which means that we can reach out to more and more young people, year-on-year, and give them access to culture.
