Musiques de Notre Temps

ℹ️ Festival currently on hiatus. The Musiques de Notre Temps festival enlivened Charenton-le-Pont and Saint-Maurice for several years, but it no longer seems to be organized currently. At the time of our editorial verification (June 2026), we found no public source (organizer, town hall, tourist office, local press) announcing a recent or upcoming edition, and the official website of the association was no longer accessible. The last publicly documented edition dates back to the mid-2010s. This entry is kept for archival purposes.

Musiques de Notre Temps: Musical Creation in the Present

The Musiques de Notre Temps festival was born in Charenton-le-Pont (94220) from the vision of Ludovic Montet, a musician and artistic director committed to promoting contemporary music in all its forms. Supported by the Musiques de Notre Temps association, whose headquarters were at 4 allée des Tilleuls in Charenton-le-Pont, the festival had established itself as a unique event in the Parisian cultural landscape: a festival that rejected the boundaries between repertoire and improvisation, between classical and popular music, between concert and immersive experience.

A Philosophy of Openness and De-compartmentalization

The artistic direction of Musiques de Notre Temps was based on a radical spirit of openness. It aimed to offer the public new ways of approaching the relationship with music, by fostering both creation and improvisation, and by blending repertoires. The festival operated on the principle that contemporary musical vitality cannot be confined to a single aesthetic: it thrives on confrontation, surprise, and the encounter between seemingly foreign sound worlds.

Concretely, this translated into a program that juxtaposed works of written contemporary music — creations, commissions to today's composers, pieces from the 20th and 21st-century repertoire (Steve Reich, John Adams, Terry Riley, Luc Ferrari…) — with improvisation performances, electronic experiments, and interdisciplinary encounters. The festival valued the physical presence of composers and performers, who participated in meetings and discussions with the public.

Venues Full of Meaning

Musiques de Notre Temps invested several local cultural venues in the communes of Charenton-le-Pont and Saint-Maurice. The Conservatoire André Navarra de Charenton-le-Pont, the Théâtre des 2 Rives, the Chapelle de Conflans, and the Théâtre du Val d'Osne in Saint-Maurice successively hosted concerts, performances, and meetings. These venues, with very different acoustic characteristics, offered distinct listening environments that enriched the musical experience.

A Pioneering Festival in the Parisian Suburbs

By establishing a high-level contemporary music festival in Charenton-le-Pont, Musiques de Notre Temps took a gamble: to demonstrate that the most demanding musical creation can find its audience far from the major Parisian stages, in a local and friendly setting. Over the editions, the festival had built a community of curious and loyal spectators, attracted by the quality and uniqueness of its programming. After its founder Ludovic Montet moved on to other musical projects, the festival no longer seems to have been renewed.