Les Folies Artistiques

Les Folies Artistiques: Symphonic Creation in the Heart of the Yonne Countryside

Born in 2022 from the passion of composer and conductor Fabien Chavanton, a professor at the Auxerre Conservatory, the Les Folies Artistiques festival stands out with an ambition as unique as it is generous: to bring high-level symphonic concerts to the villages of Puisaye-Forterre and Auxerrois every summer, in the heart of this Burgundian region shaped by forests, ponds, and the secret bocages dear to Colette.

The concept is as simple as it is effective: each year, a new original musical creation is composed, orchestrated, and staged by Fabien Chavanton, then performed in concert in four or five heritage churches in the area — the churches of Ouanne, Charny-Orée de Puisaye, Toucy, Gy-l'Évêque, and Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye. The festival is thus traveling by nature, traversing the roads of the Yonne to bring music where it is scarce, in rural communities whose Romanesque and Gothic churches offer exceptional natural acoustics.

An Artistic Identity Rooted in Creation

What fundamentally distinguishes Les Folies Artistiques from other classical music festivals in the region is the absolute priority given to contemporary creation. Each edition provides an opportunity for a new, previously unreleased work, bearing the signature of Fabien Chavanton — a composer trained in orchestral writing and post-romantic harmony — sometimes enriched by external artistic collaborations.

From its first edition in 2022, the festival showed its colors with a concert of musical creations performed by 25 professional musicians and choristers, mainly from Dijon: a string orchestra, a women's choir, and piano, in the post-romantic style that characterizes Chavanton's sound world.

In 2023, the festival broadened its scope by inviting the piano duo AEstésis — Audrey Dumont and Élodie Chech — for the show Debussy en résonances, an immersive dive into the French composer's universe through the correspondence between music, painting, and poetry. Visual projections and poetic readings accompanied the piano pieces in a sensory and dreamlike journey.

The 2024 edition marked a spectacular turning point: Le Temps d'une Horloge, a choreographed musical tale, brought together an orchestra of 30 professional musicians accompanied by a singer, a dancer, and a narrator-actress. Over three acts, the story of a young woman trying to repair a stopped clock unfolded through strong symbols — a diary, a music box, a blacksmith, an antique dealer, a jeweler, a fountain — in a total performance combining music, dance, and theater.

In 2025, for its fourth edition, Les Folies Artistiques reinvents itself again in the form of a cine-concert: Fabien Chavanton teams up with composer Joris Baboulène and the film association Eva Films, led by Thierry Mura, to create live soundtracks for short films projected on a big screen. About fifteen musicians accompany the screenings in real-time, finely illustrating the synchronization work between music and image. The traveling format remains true to itself: four concerts in four days in four villages of the Yonne.

A Festival Accessible to All

One of the most important hallmarks of Les Folies Artistiques is its entirely free access. No ticketing, no entrance fee: concerts are open to everyone, with a simple donation at the end of each performance. This philosophy is part of a deep commitment to cultural democratization: enabling residents of rural Yonne villages to discover or rediscover classical music and symphonic creations without financial barriers.

The festival is organized by the association Les Folies Artistiques, founded on February 23, 2022, and registered in Ouanne (89560), with its headquarters at 14 le Moulin Mignon. Fabien Chavanton is the artistic director, supported by Catherine Chavanton for organization and logistics.

The Venues: Open-Air Romanesque and Gothic Heritage

The festival's touring area covers Puisaye-Forterre and Auxerrois, two geographical entities with distinct characteristics. Puisaye, a land of forests, ponds, and pottery, offers discreet villages with preserved medieval churches. Auxerrois, more urbanized, opens onto the wine-growing plain and boasts a rich religious architectural heritage.

• Ouanne — Festival headquarters village, Romanesque church in the heart of the town
• Charny-Orée de Puisaye — New municipality formed by the merger of several Puisaye villages
• Toucy — Capital of Puisaye, birthplace of Pierre Larousse
• Gy-l'Évêque — Small village in Auxerrois with the Church of Saint-Phal
• Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye — Birthplace of Colette, with remarkable architectural heritage

These five concert venues share remarkable natural acoustics, inherent to the stone volumes of Romanesque and Gothic buildings, which the festival carefully utilizes in its program design.

A Festival in Full Expansion

In four editions, Les Folies Artistiques has established a strong identity in the cultural landscape of the Yonne. The festival is now listed by the Auxerrois Tourist Office, the My89 cultural portal, and the Puisaye-Forterre community of communes. Its positioning — classical creation music, innovative formats (musical tale, cine-concert, total performance), free access, rural touring — makes it a unique event in the department, acclaimed by an ever-growing audience each summer.