POTE in French = “buddy”, “pal”

August 18, 2020Guest User

(This is part 5 of a five-part series on my journey that led me to create a new music festival in Besançon, France.)

I don’t know my true self or my true identity. It changes in life with different periods. Am I the same person when I was a scholarship student in the US or a young, jobless mother in France?

There are certain essential things that you carry all your life.

Circumstances and age make me change.

Today I feel like a teenager, but more urgent than ever - no time for pettiness, for intolerance.

Today, I have a very simple life: no car, no house. Having been displaced and lost so much, I’ve had to realize that things don’t matter. When I was a child in Taiwan, we moved literally every year. In America, in Europe, the story of packing, storage, and shipping across continents is a saga in itself. Today, I keep virtually nothing as in physical objects. What matters is people, the joy of being together, what we create with our minds, and the indelible memories we share:

With musicians of wide-ranging ages, nationalities, backgrounds, we shared not only breakfast, lunch, dinner, rehearsals, lessons, games, but also the fun of discovering simultaneously the beauty and surprises in a piece of music together,

the fun of making mistakes and having a good laugh together,

the fun of helping one another grow and thrive,

the fun of pushing the boundaries together, playing with the weird stuff at the margin,

the fun of sharing our living musical heritage and emotions with anyone and everyone.

A few days ago, I announced that I’ve created a new music festival, Playing On The Edge, POTE. The first edition will take place in Besançon from October 23 to 25.

French for “buddy”, “pal”, POTE is engaged to create an inclusive, artistic community where each person has an expressive, creative voice.

I’m thrilled to invite you – amateur or professional musicians, students, amateurs, dancers, performing artists - to come play with us at the POTE Festival.

As an individual artist or as an ensemble, you can apply before September 15 by proposing your dream project or participating in ensemble pieces such as Terry Riley’s “In C”.

For a taste of how the piece begins and how everyone can join in, here’s a collaborative recorded by:

Gaël Rabbe in Autrans

Yasmina Spiegelberg

in Vermont (The Yellow Barn)

in Genève

in Hong Kong