Skip to main content

The Alonetimes

Jennifer Walshe & Philip Venables

  • Events, Paris
  • Thu 16 Apr → Sat 18 Apr 2026, 21:00
Book a ticket
The Alonetimes Jennifer Walshe and Philip Venables 2025
The Alonetimes, Jennifer Walshe and Philip Venables Photos © Michel Siwon © Harald Hoffmann

Location

Studio Marie-Claude Beaud

Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain

Porte Saint-Honoré

Directions

Price

Full price: 15€ | Reduced price: 10€

Infos

This show contains language with familiar remarks that may offend the sensibilities of some audiences.

Initiated by the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain and the Festival Musica, The Alonetimes brings together for the first time two major figures of the contemporary music scene, Jennifer Walshe and Philip Venables. Commissioned for the new spaces of the Fondation Cartier, the piece involves a true work of co-composition, where two singular writing styles confront, alter, and recompose each other.

The Alonetimes stages the fragmented narratives of our solitudes. On stage, six voices intertwine, converse, harmonize, and brush past each other without ever truly meeting. They bring forth a series of familiar situations: first times, feverish anticipation, missed appointments, abrupt breakups, embarrassing memories. The play thus explores contemporary forms of relationships, shaped by digital usage, where the promise of permanent connection coexists with an increased experience of distance and disconnect.

Through this kaleidoscope of experiences, a cartography of contemporary solitudes emerges. What is at play here is less isolation than the difficulty of entering into a relationship, of maintaining a bond, of narrating what has happened — or what has not happened, perhaps will never happen. Between lucidity and irony, Jennifer Walshe and Philip Venables compose a musical and scenic form where fragility, desire, and embarrassment surface, closely reflecting the ordinary experience of relationships.

  • The Alonetimes
    The Alonetimes, répétition © Laurent Khram
  • The Alonetimes
    The Alonetimes, répétition © Laurent Khram
Portrait de Jennifer Walshe The Alonetimes © Michel Siwon

Jennifer Walshe

Dublin-born composer and performer Jennifer Walshe has been called “the most original compositional voice” (The Irish Times) and “the Wild Girl of Darmstadt” (Frankfurter Rundschau).

Portrait de Philip Venables The Alonetimes © Harald Hoffmann

Philip Venables

Collaborative composer Philip Venables is described as “an arrestingly original musical personality” by Alex Ross in The New Yorker and as “one of the finest composers around” by The Guardian. Philip’s work often revolves around storytelling.

Credits

Commission : Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain
Production : Festival Musica
Text, Music & Direction : Jennifer Walshe & Philip Venables
Accordion : Andreas Borregaard
Violin : Diamanda La Berge Dramm
Voice : Loré Lixenberg
Voice : Oskar McCarthy
Percussion : Vanessa Porter
Bass clarinet : Adam Starkie

Co-production partners :
Deutsche Oper, Berlin
BOZAR, Bruxelles
Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ, Amsterdam
Ultima, Oslo
New Music, Dublin
Music Biennale Zagreb
Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, Oxford
With the support of the Centre Culturel Irlandais 

Events