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The French ensemble La Tempête is unafraid to venture beyond convention. In the project Azahar, which is Spanish for orange blossom, the ensemble interweaves the polyphony of Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame, one of the greatest masterpieces of the Middle Ages, with the poetry of Spanish cantigas and the neoclassical sounds of Stravinsky and Ohana. Its passionate leader, Simon-Pierre Bestion, aims to “disorient the listener in various periods of history”, as he puts it. You might well ask yourself which music is actually Stravinsky, Ohana or Machaut. Impressively, Bestion makes pieces of music from different centuries overflow into each other, resulting in a majestic tapestry of sound. A new lighting design has been developed especially for this creation.