Description
For more than 25 years, Le Sacre du Tympan has been bassist, composer and arranger Fred Pallem's orchestra and his main means of expression. A variable-geometry ensemble with a dozen albums and many concerts in France and abroad to its name, it serves three purposes: championing Pallem's original repertoire, staging musical shows for young audiences, and presenting re-arranged programmes devoted to the artists who shaped his writing, mostly from the world of film music: Andre Popp, Michel Legrand, Blaxploitation, Michel Magne and, above all, Francois de Roubaix.
Pallem's bond with De Roubaix goes back a long way. In 2008 the orchestra created a De Roubaix programme for the Jazz a la Villette festival: a five-piece line-up focusing on the electronics and analogue keyboards of the home-studio and synthesiser pioneer, recorded in 2015.
For the fiftieth anniversary of the composer's death in November 2025, Pallem widened the lens to the orchestral dimension of De Roubaix's work, revealing how timeless it remains and how far his influence reached, even among legends such as Ennio Morricone, Michel Legrand and John Barry. For the first time, he also reworked the pieces into hypnotic medleys.
Film scores, TV themes and melodies etched in French collective memory make up the album, recorded during rehearsals for the orchestra's Paris concerts with a string quartet, three brass, reeds, guitar, keyboards, bass and drums. The pleasure the musicians take in this repertoire shines through on tape.
