Laurent Cuniot
Musical Director
TM+ creator and musical director
To open ears, imaginations, repertoires, to overcome prejudices, to create bridges between the public, artists, artistic disciplines and musical cultures
Laurent Cuniot (born in 1957), conductor and musical director
Laurent Cuniot is one of the few French musicians to be both a composer and a director.
He founded TM+ in 1986. As its music director, he has been developing its artistic project and made of TM+ one of the main orchestral ensembles of contemporary music in France.
Besides Laurent Cuniot is regularly invited to conduct great orchestras such as the Belgrade Radio Orchestra, the KZN Orchestra, the Orchestre National de Lille, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and the Orchestre symphonique de Mulhouse. He also works with specialized ensembles among which Alter Ego (Italy), Recherche (Germany), Sond’Ar-te Electric Ensemble (Portugal), Court-circuit and the Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain (France).
Born in Reims, he began his musical studies at the National Conservatory of Reims, before continuing them at the CNSM of Paris in the classes of violin, chamber music, analysis, harmony and then composition and musical research with Pierre Schaeffer and Guy Reibel. He completed his training with Youri Simonov in master classes in conducting in Miskolc (Hungary).
Since then, he has been working in parallel as a composer, conductor and teacher. Professor of composition and new technologies at the CNSMDP until 2000, he was also for several years the producer at Radio France of “concert-readings”, public broadcasts devoted to the analysis and interpretation of works from the Middle Ages to the present day.
Nourished by the avant-gardes of the 20th century, his music questions the expressive power of contemporary writing in the service of a dramaturgy crossed by the energy and colors of sound. Among his most recent pieces L’Ange double (Double Angel), for oboe and orchestra, was premiered in February 2018 by Olivier Doise and the Philharmonic Orchestra of Radio France conducted by Mikko Franck, Trans-Portées for soprano, oboe, clarinet and cello was premiered in March 2019 in Bangladesh during a project with traditional singer Farida Parveen and L’Enfant inouï (The Extraordinary Child), an opera for young audiences written and directed by Sylvain Maurice and Une created in 2021 for vibraphone and orchestral ensemble, draws on romantic introspection.
By choosing Nanterre as his residency since 1996, Laurent Cuniot has made TM+ an orchestra that is in direct contact with the present, that places the public at the heart of its activities, and that supports musical creation through original forms such as listening journey and unusual multidisciplinary projects. After the French premiere of the participatory opera Votre Faust, which he directed in a production by Aliénor Dauchez, and the concert Les Rayures du Zèbre a cross between contemporary music and jazz, Laurent Cuniot continues to lead TM+ into new musical territory with the performance The Other (In)Side by Benjamin de la Fuente and Jos Houben and the multimedia concert Bal Passé (Past Ball) by Januibe Tejera and Claudio Cavallari. In 2021, he creates La Vallée de l’étonnement (The Valley of astonishment) directed by Sylvain Maurice, with music by Alexandros Markeas.
His monographic CD “Efji”eleaseed in January 2022 on the Merci pour les sons label was unanimously praised by the press:
“The music of the conductor and founder TM+ delicately rolls into the ear and firmly imposes itself on the mind. (…) Laurent Cuniot knows how to combine elegance and purity even in the space of electronics. Everywhere, writing and interpretation contribute to the magnetism of the music” by Pierre Gervasoni, Le Monde