Graindelavoix is an artistic collective, founded by Björn Schmelzer. It unites musicians who want to experiment with the relationship between performance and creation. The ensemble is fascinated by voices that discontinue their function as vehicles of communication, voices that refrain from carrying a message, but rather limit themselves to being the expression of their groundwork.

The ensemble searches in old repertoires for the undercurrent that makes those voices stand out against the grain of their era, makes them deploy their untimely character, thus enabling an interval, a space. What interests graindelavoix, is the relationship between notation and what remains elusive of this: the know-how of the singer (ornaments, improvisation, gestures…).

Preferential materials include Ockeghem’s polyphony, the complaint, the machicotage or extemporary ornamentation of plainsong by priests (machicots were members of the lower clergy who were singers), Mediterranean practices, late-scholastic dynamics and cinematics, the affective body, gesture and visual culture. The ensemble offers performances (concerts or performances in the framework of music theatre) that are repercussions of a broader process of work and research in progress.

For the CD “Poissance d’amours” graindelavoix received the Edison Award 2009 in the Netherlands in 2009.