★The audiovisual art of the piano: a French encounter of illusion and poetry

Piano piano is a work built from music and moving images, recounting a youthful encounter and an artistic adventure born from a long-awaited reunion.

I met Adrien about twenty years ago. He was juggling. Wonderfully. Each time he appeared, there was an enigmatic grace to him, a language of his own, a kind of poetry. It was closer to a bird-tamer than to what we imagined juggling to be at the time. He seemed to make small transparent stars dance in the air.—David Babin (Babx)

David has been part of my playlists for many years. His music holds the same sensuality I seek in movement and in images. For this project, I imagine creating and developing a set of tools that allows images to be performed, so that video projection can feel as alive as possible, breathing with the rhythm of the moment as much as with the sound of each note. Setting music in motion is a way of working that has always inspired me as a juggler.—Adrien Mondot

Twenty years ago, two young French artists met in a small performance space in Avignon. David Babin was at the piano, trying out a freshly written melody, while Adrien Mondot spent his days juggling as a way of escaping his work as an IT engineer. Today, David is known as Babx, a celebrated singer-songwriter, composer, arranger, and pianist whose albums have earned wide acclaim in the French music scene. Adrien, meanwhile, gained recognition as part of the artistic duo Adrien M & Claire B, whose works merge digital technology and physical performance. The duo’s creations have been featured at major international arts festivals, and works such as Acqua Alta and Équinoxe have been presented at NTT, admired for their distinctive visual language.

In Piano piano, Adrien Mondot and Babx reunite after years of independent artistic journeys, rediscovering the early impulse that shaped their work: the pleasure of dreaming, experimenting, and performing. David steps away from his role as a singer and takes his place at the piano, performing selections from his album A House with a Piano in It, where French chanson, jazz, and contemporary improvisation intertwine. Adrien reclaims the stage through the delicate craft of crystal-ball juggling, allowing the music to lead him back into the shifting sensations of balance and gravity.

Onstage, the piano and performers are fully immersed in an image-space shaped by live projection. Each note that falls and every turn of the body feels like a stroll between abstraction and impressionism. Music and light unfold into drifting, dreamlike universes, inviting the audience to step inside and experience a world unlike any they have known.

Visual conception, computer design and juggling/ Adrien Mondot
Original music and performance/ babx
Computer development assistance/ Eva Décorps
Digital toolsets for management/ Loïs Drouglazet
Technical direction/ Raphaël Guénot
Technical management and sound engineering/ Clément Aubry, Romain Sicard - alternating

Coproduction/ Adrien M & La Familia