« When I first heard the song of his harmonica, I entered a magical world of moving fractal architectures. My friend Florentino, Martin's son, is a healer in the Kamëntšá community of Sibundoy, in southern Colombia, a mountain-top town less than a hundred kilometres from the Amazon jungle. By his side, I learned a new way of approaching music, as a tool for conveying energy, a vehicle for the divine.

In this work, I use the orchestra as a kind of sound magnifying glass. A large instrument that allows me to zoom in on this harmonica sound, to get inside this song - the sound of the breath reverberated by the spirit. It's a rather unusual formation: a reduced orchestra, with few strings, winds and brass, with the presence of the accordion, an unusual instrument in orchestral music. The writing here is closer to that of a large chamber ensemble, with the voices often in divisi.

The final instrumentation responds directly to the choice of programme, concocted with Zoi Tsokanou, the conductor invited by the Festival to lead the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande: Partiels by Gérard Grisey, an emblematic work of the spectral school, and Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, arranged for chamber orchestra by Thierry Blondeau. » — Daniel Zea

Les Amplitudes Festival