The parents of Skol ar Yezhoù, the bilingual school at Pabu, hold their fest-noz for the school’s twenty-fifth year. Four sets share the night. BLUE GLAZ brings five women singers of the Breton scene, and KERLOA a trio of the Goëlo that sets treujenn-gaol beside accordion and guitar. MARTIN / PINC play violin and accordion; GEORGELIN / BARBIER answer on bombarde and biniou, for the dancers. The schoolchildren take their part too.
Region: Brittany
Les îles d’Iroise d’hier à aujourd’hui, au CEMO
The Centre d’Étude du Milieu d’Ouessant gives over its Ar Gouzou hall to two displays on the heritage and history of the island. One carries the title « The Iroise Islands: Past and Present », the other « The Islands of Ouessant ». Photographs sit beside documents and personal accounts. They record the life and the landscapes of the archipelago over time, assembled by the centre that studies the Iroise milieu.
Une épopée urbaine : Redon en photographies
Redon’s urban fabric has been forming since the Middle Ages, and the second half of the twentieth century reshaped the town and the way its people lived in it. The photographs put that change on view and ask what inhabiting the town means now. The City of Redon mounts the exhibition with the Groupement culturel breton des Pays de Vilaine and the APPHR. It belongs to La Bogue d’Or, the autumn season Redon gives to Breton tale and music.
Opozit, steel frame-building at Pommeret
Opozit builds custom steel bicycles inside Atelier OPN, a former farmstead in the Breton country, and opens its workshop for the Semaines du Tourisme Economique et des Savoir-Faire. Pierre, once a research engineer, chose the workbench over the design office. A frame is followed from the first digital sketch to the final weld, through bending, cutting and brazing. Computer-aided design sets its geometry to the millimetre for one rider’s build.
Une saïrée avec Mélie at the Ferme d’Antan
Mélie is the farmer at the Écomusée de La Ferme d’Antan, and as the light goes she hands visitors her own chores: the animals to see to, the eggs to gather. The work earns a collation à l’ancienne by the fire in the hôté. Mélie speaks cor’gallo throughout and is understood anyway, which is the whole point of the hour. Twelve people at most join her, as one of the Minutes Bleues sessions set in Côtes-d’Armor heritage places at dawn or dusk.
Festival Presqu’île Breizh in Carnac
Carnac takes its turn in the Presqu’île Breizh festival, a Breton music event gathering the cercles and bagads of Brittany and beyond. On the Grande Plage the cercle de Lorient performs as Celtique Bugale an Oriant. The Koroll GR34 project then opens twenty-six emblematic Breton dances to anyone who wants to try them. Thirty women pipers of the Hundred Percent collective parade up Rue Saint-Cornély to the Place de l’Église.
Agnès Pormenté opens her pastel gallery, Paimpol
Agnès Pormenté works in dry pastel, and she opens the gallery where she shows nothing but her own work. Its four exhibition rooms hold about sixty paintings, nearly all of them landscapes of the country around Paimpol, taken in every season. A trained musician, she carries piano technique across into the pastel, and she lets callers watch how she works. Children from six are admitted, and the visit goes ahead only if two people come.
Cépi Ébénisterie: Straw Marquetry in Moncontour
Cépi Ébénisterie opens its workshop on Rue Charbonnerie at Moncontour, one of 27 taking part across Lamballe Terre et Mer. The cabinetmaker works in two registers: furniture and objects made to measure, and the restoration of older pieces. The rarer trade shown is marqueterie de paille, straw marquetry, which the workshop also teaches as an initiation. Each opening is a short presentation of the craft with a demonstration, six people at a time.
Halloween baking at the Biscuiterie Ménou
The Biscuiterie Ménou gives this holiday session to the gâteau breton. The short programme around it also takes in a spider-shaped bread and a pumpkin brioche. The house has baked at Plougonver since 1879, three generations of the family have worked the bakery, and its range runs to palets, galettes and gâteaux bretons. The group is capped and booking is required. The boutique-musée beside the ovens carries two centuries of the craft.
Visite de la cidrerie du Penthièvre, Hénansal
Eva and Nathan opened this family cidrerie at Hénansal a year ago, and they now walk visitors through the whole of it. The round begins in the orchards, with the apple varieties and the blending, then moves to the vats and the press that draws the juice. Fermentation does the rest, turning the cider sparkling on its own with no gas added. The bottling line closes the circuit, and a tasting with the two growers ends the visit.