ARS'YS

After studying composition at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris and organ with Jean Boyer, Lesvenan went on to become a concert performer. Hervé Lesvenan teaches at the Quimper Conservatoire and in higher education, and writes and composes a variety of shows.

A collective rather than a group in the strict sense of the word, Ars'Ys has already released several albums, and Venti is the fifth of them. Venti, 20 years in Italian, also refers to the winds. The Breton winds that are Gwalarn and Gevred, but also many other winds such as the Scirocco, a humid, hot wind from southern Italy, the Zephyr, a gentle, hot wind, the Khamsin, a burning sand wind that blows from the Egyptian desert to Lebanon, or the Loo, a south-west from the Thar desert (India, Pakistan). All have become the titles of this superb album.
The six musicians and singers who make up Ars'Ys describe themselves as wind passengers who go where the wind takes them. In a few original tableaux, they set out on a long peregrination that draws on a wide range of musical influences.
Joining Hervé Lesvenan on keyboards, compositions and arrangements are Marta Gliozzi on organ, Ronan Baudry on saxophones, Julien Stévenin on double bass, Jérôme Kerihuel on percussion, as well as Welshwoman Ffran May and Hervé's own daughter Oriann Lesvenan on vocals. Songs in English, Healing Landscape and Breton, Gwerz ar Vezhinerien and Williwaw.
A multi-faceted collective, Ars'Ys blends the style of composer H. Lesvenan's style with a variety of aesthetics, an openness to improvisation and influences from southern Europe and the Middle East, but also from western Brittany and the wide open spaces of Sweden, in a singular universe of many musical colours.
It's a beautiful album that's well worth discovering.

Les Éditions Buissonnières – Distribution Coop Breizh