_"L'Nfer, un point de détail"_: this is an evening of pop with François Sarhan, created at the Metz Arsenal in 2006 where it caused quite a stir. Not exactly a show, but not a concert either. More a variety set in the shape of the Radio-Sarhan studio. The set offers up eight musicians and mikes, chamber music blended liberally with rock, computers, samples, words, bodies that speak, music that speaks. In a feverish, sarcastic atmosphere that evokes the heyday of experimental rock and seems to invoke the ghost of Zappa, a tight score explores in detail the rhythms, hesitations, pauses and resumptions of ordinary speech. And it is this ordinary speech that is the star of the show: the voice of narration, of the Dictaphone, of confession, of conversation. It inflicts its rhythm, modulates the phrasing, wakes up the writing.

It comes from various sources: pre-recorded voices (small girls, crowds, preachers), arrangements (Soft Machine, Frank Zappa), and original works by François Sarhan – with himself as the announcer.

It works by imitations, cover versions, free counterpoint (or _remixes_), all muddled together the way a radio programme on music news, or simply news, might be. The composer, like a radio presenter who has got the wrong studio, reels off a curious anecdote that refers to his own disappearance. And the music is off, following, splitting away, harmonising… From his laptop, Sarhan launches jingles that interrupt the flow or clash with what is being said. And then suddenly the curtain tears apart and Linda appears: she has sinned but she was a victim; she has met God and her confession will save her. This pastiche of religious shows by American television evangelists perfectly captures their words and sobs, conjuring up the obscene reality we now live in.

François Sarhan (b. September 30, 1972, Rouen).
Modern (Frankfurt), Ensemble Recherche, Ictus Ensemble, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radiofrance, among others, have performed his works.
Mr. Sarhan has taught at IRCAM between 1998 and 2002, and at Marc Bloch University in Strasbourg since 1999. He wrote an History of Music (published in 2002 by Flammarion, Paris), and is the initiator of the artistic collective CRWTH , which is active in the perfor- mance of multimedia projects since 2000. He is also a visual artist, encyclopedist in a surrealistic way, and makes his own shows as a performer and stage director.
He recently collaborated with South African artist William Kentridge on a show called Telegrams from the Nose, presented more than 30 times all over Europe. He started directing himself his own produc- tions in 2008, and lastly made a King Lear, chamber opera, as composer, stage director and film maker. He recently opened his first exhibition in Johannesburg, initiating a new aspect of his art, with videos, collages and artist books. His next projects include a movie and a show produced by LOD, in Ghent, a compilation of the texts from his Encyclopedia, and a series of instrumental music works.