PANORAMA
After a period of relative silence, Thomas Azier returns with PANORAMA. Known for his melancholic melodic language and ambitious approach to pop music, Azier now opens up a wider world shaped by illness, desire, fear, hope, memory and the strange beauty of being alive in unstable times.
The project forms a polyphonic narrative. Poems, field recordings, video works and performative elements disrupt the traditional concert structure, giving it a fractured, collage-like character, until a quiet logic emerges.
PANORAMA is a collection of perspectives. The voice of a beluga whale, lost and disoriented, swimming upriver through the Seine. An opera singer lamenting from the audience. A man’s silent fall filmed in slow motion. An audio speaker onstage emitting field recordings as if they were relics retrieved from a past world. A poem about a lonely Parisian boy, in a deserted overheated summer city.
Often described as poignant, Azier’s music carries his strong melodic and melancholic sensibility further in PANORAMA, merging string arrangements and experimental practices into a series of intriguing pieces. His voice becomes an interpretative tool, shifting between male and female, human and animal, mythical and real. Songs are juxtaposed with intermissions and character changes that shift rhythm and mood, like switching channels or scrolling through an endless feed.
With two Edison Awards, a Deutsche Schallplattenpreis, six albums and over 500 concerts behind him, Azier has spent twelve years shaping his own corner of European pop. His songs have soundtracked YSL campaigns and a blockbuster film; as a writer and producer, he has worked with Stromae, Faber and Hang Youth. PANORAMA opens a new chapter where Azier continues to push the boundaries of pop, performance and cinematic storytelling.
On 3 October at PHIL, Haarlem Vinyl Festival welcomes an artist whose work turns fragmentation into beauty, and whose songs open onto worlds both fractured and whole.
Thomas Azier
Date & Time: Saturday October 3, 20:00
Venue: PHIL (Kleine Zaal)
Tickets (starting from €29) are available here, access is also included in the Haarlem Vinyl Festival Weekend Pass (€95).