Nubu

Presented by the Centre Culturel d'Ecully. Blending jazz, folk songs and improvisation, NUBU (short for Nahash Urban Brass Unit) invents its own folklore, a music as timeless as it is contemporary.

The group playfully brings together instruments from different eras: the serpent, the European ancestor of the tuba; the flugabone, devised more recently for its practicality within marching bands; the trombone; hide-headed percussion; and the double bass.

The voices form a material in their own right, elastic and bouncing, nourished by scansion, yodelling and shouts.

By relishing the mixing of eras with gusto, NUBU gives the serpent - with the mystical charge it suggests and its timbre fallen into oblivion - an unexpected place in a dazzling present.