Artistic Research : Erasmushogeschool Brussel, Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel. Orchestral piece : Commissioned by l'Itinéraire (DRAC Regional Department of Cultural Affairs - aide à la composition musicale France). Premiered by Laiana Oliveira (soprano), soloists of l'Itinéraire Ensemble (Mathilde Lauridon, Lucia Peralta, Myrtille Hetzel, Julie Brunet-Jailly, David Mengelle), USP Chamber Orchestra, Guri Santa Marcelina Young Choir, dir. Ricardo Bologna. 26 October 2025 Teatro Sao Pedro, Sao Paulo Brazil (Année France-Brésil official programmation)
Symphonia Botanica for soprano, violin, viola, cello, choir (children or high voices), 5 percussionist and string orchestra. Duration : ca. 20 minutes.
Workshops based on Symphonia Botanica : Viveiros (a real-time composition for young string players) Creative Orchestra (interaction and composition for orchestra players), Songs of the Green Folks : folksong featuring plants and vegetal species for choir and vocal ensembles.
Symphonia Botanica creates opportunities for collaboration among soloists, orchestras, and diverse institutions. The work foregrounds an ecological perspective that resonates deeply with the urgencies of our time. It opens spaces for deep listening and cohabitation within a polyphonic composition rich in cosmologies and multiple ways of knowing.
It proposes methods and practices to reinforce relationships within the traditional orchestra. Through an organic approach, it seeks to nurture interactions between musicians and their environment, creating deeper levels of listening. The orchestra–forest emerges as a network of distributed intelligence, inspired by the vegetal world.
According to Yanomami mythology, all music on Earth originates from Amoa Hi, the Tree of Songs. Endowed with a thousand mouths, it pours forth an endless stream of melodies—ever new and ever renewed, as countless as the stars at the heart of the sky (The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert).
Each performance of Symphonia Botanica is unique. The texts are translated into the local language, allowing the piece to take root in different cultural and ecological contexts. Within this process of translation, a central question emerges: how can the image of the falling sky be interpreted through the perspective of local cultures? How are human interventions in the world perceived in different regions of the globe? How does the Yanomami message arrive, resonate, and transform in your place today?
Structured in short movements that follow a secular passion form—alternating recitative and songs—the work places the string orchestra at its core, encircled by a percussion ensemble. This configuration brings an especially engaging role to the orchestra, inviting musicians into an active dialogue with one another and with their environment. The score stimulates a high degree of interaction, situating performers and audience alike within a polyphonic forest of sounds.
The vegetal world finds its voice through song. In the final movement, numerous species of the Brazilian cerrado are invoked, their presence woven into the granular textures of the percussion.
Another song unfolds as a crossing of cultures: the medieval garden of the Rose and the Lily—symbols of devotion, purity, and cosmological order—encounters the plants and flowers of the cerrado, carriers of other temporalities and knowledges. Among them, the Jurema flower emerges as a central figure, bringing with it the birth of the sacred tree that bears the same name. The Jurema tree, revered as a living axis between worlds, embodies resistance, healing, and continuity, anchoring the work in a shared, transhistorical ecology of the sacred.
to be translated and adapted into the local language for each performance
I. Dream - Recitative
You should dream of the earth / For it has a heart and breathes / In dreams the forest speaks / The rivers tell truths / The spirits of the woods dance / And the earth pulses, alive. / You should dream / Of the roots that embrace the world / Of the winds that blow memories / You should dream of the waters. / You should dream / As the ancient trees dream / As the earth itself dreams / Before the sky falls. / You should dream to remember / That everything is alive / Orygham speak the leaves / In the motherlanguage of the world. / You should dream to feel / the pulse beneath your feet / And the earth's veins / in the fertile darkness of time.
II. Amoa Hi for soprano and string orchestra
A single tree. A million mouths / Its whispering songs / Flow like a river / Without beginning or end / Numerous as the stars in the sky / Where earth embraces the horizon / Where rest the eternal roots of heaven / Infinite chorus of the forest / House woven of sounds.
III. Rose and Lily Song
I was in the Rose garden. / I sighed, further ahead I saw a Lily plant / It was crying, I was in love / It was scenting, I was in love / I sat down / When I stood up / It was crying, I was in love / It was scenting.
IV. Morning - Recitative
That morning you felt / The world's scent Manaçá, Peroba, / Cells unfolding in the sun / Microscopic music / That morning you saw / Deep green, light-green, shadow-green / In textures and reliefs / The spirals of time/ Taste of awakened chlorophyll / New moon's tongue / When you closed your eyes / You heard all this together.
V. Jurema Song
Gather flowers Oh little Jurema Oh Juremá / Leaves bark and seeds / Manacá, Paricá/ Clove cinnamon and ginger / Oh little Jurema / Juremiê / At the foot of Jurema there are flowers / Oh little Jurema / Eia Danda Juçá / Ouricuri foot of Manacá / Oh red sky / The arrow stained / The Mirror earth / Jurema Fell / Jurema Tenueflora / Mimosa Verrucosa / Mimosa Nigra / Persistent Mimosa / Bloomed.
VI. Ponta de Mata Song
Forest edge has Jackfruit / Has Cajui has Mango tree / Araticum and Guavira / Has Murici Gameleira. /Forest edge has Jackfruit / Has Cajui has Mango tree / Ingá Pacaba Guavira / Mangaba and Pitangueira.
Symphonia botanica, by Michelle Agnes, is one of those emblematic works that speak to one of the greatest dramas of our time—an invitation for the 170 or 180 nations gathered in Belém do Pará at COP-30, the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, to reflect on this warning by Davi Kopenawa:
“The forest is alive. It will only die if white people insist on destroying it. If they succeed, the rivers will disappear beneath the ground, the soil will crumble, the trees will wither, and the stones will crack in the heat. The dried-out land will become empty and silent. The xapiri spirits, who descend from the mountains to play in the forest through their mirrors, will flee far away. Their fathers, the shamans, will no longer be able to call them and make them dance to protect us. They will no longer be able to drive away the epidemic fumes that devour us. They will no longer be able to restrain the malevolent beings, who will turn the forest into chaos. Then we will die, one after another, both white people and us. All the shamans will eventually die. And when there is no one left alive to hold up the sky, it will collapse.”
As the excellent soprano Laiana Oliveira delivered the moving texts of the shaman Davi Kopenawa, while the orchestra reproduced the rustling of leaves and the marvelous sounds of the forest, I felt immersed in the very entrails of the Amazon, transported to The Lost Steps, the masterpiece by Alejo Carpentier.
João Marcos Coelho, Revista Concerto, 27/10/2025
In São Paulo, the soloists of the French ensemble L’Itinéraire joined the University of São Paulo Chamber Orchestra, together with the Guri Santa Marcelina Choir. The project was presented as part of the official France–Brazil Season of the Institut Français. This initiative was accompanied by a series of meetings and workshops within the Guri Santa Marcelina social music program, a foundation that promotes music as a tool for social inclusion.
Research at Inhotim Institute Brumadinho MG
During this phase of the project, I participated in an artistic residency that enabled an exchange of knowledge with the Inhotim Institute’s team of biologists. Beyond being a monumental botanical garden and a leading contemporary art museum, the Institute also hosts an orchestra and a music academy. As part of the program What Is a Plant?, several cross-disciplinary projects were developed, encouraging dialogue between music, biology, and the visual arts.
The residency included workshops, open-air performances, and real-time composition sessions with the Inhotim Orchestra and the Inhotim Children’s Orchestra, conducted by Leandro Oliveira.
