The French Regional Council Hauts-de-Seine, currently building its ‘Cité musicale’ at the Seguin Island in Boulogne-Billancourt (20 kilometers West from Downtown Paris), has signed a contract with TV broadcaster TF1 about the programming of both of the concert halls. Boulogne-Billancourt based TF1 is a private national French TV channel, controlled by TF1 Group, whose major share-holder is Bouygues,…the company in charge of the construction at Seguin Island.
Though it will not astonish to see TF1 operating in the field of pop music, it looks strange to see those people who give not more than three minutes time to classical music in a year, at the helm of a classical concert hall with 1.100 seats.
First concerts are supposed to happen in 2016, several months after the opening of the new Paris Philharmonic Hall (situated at the opposite North-Eastern end of the capital). Seguin hall will have the choir ‘Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine’ as well as Laurence Equilbey’s ‘Insula Orchestra’ as residents.
