The entire history of jazz, in barely more than an hour! An original creation by arranger Jean Gobinet, conceived as a grand instrumental suite offering a kaleidoscope of jazz history from the late nineteenth century to the 1990s. Free admission.

Congo Square

Kiosque Bosc - Esplanade Charles de Gaulle

The sensual timbre of Marie-Nicole Lemieux and the virtuosic sections of the Orchestre National de France: the ideal tools for interpreting two great pages of German Romanticism.

Mahler 5

Opéra Berlioz

A program of transcriptions and pieces for guitar across Europe and the centuries: Buxtehude, Scarlatti, Albéniz, Piazzolla, Ponce, Abels.

Virgile Barthe, guitar

Église Saint-Pierre

L'Ensemble Cordance celebrates chamber music: voice and piano sublimate the lied and mélodie, intimate poetry and emotion. By inventing the mélodie with orchestra, Berlioz gave the genre an entirely different scope, and he was followed by composers such as Chausson and Ravel. The expressive possibilities of the genre inspired the ensemble Cordance to transcribe for voice and string quartet a number of mélodies by Chausson and several lieder by Brahms, featured in the program of this concert.

EPSG:4326

The Art of the Mélodie

Le Corum

Swing is their specialty! This intergenerational ensemble, Les Loustics du Pic, has no equal when it comes to reviving the golden age of the big band, while never hesitating to venture into more modern styles.

Big Band des Loustics du Pic

Bruch's ambitious Violin Concerto No. 1, performed by the virtuoso violinist Hilary Hahn. Schumann's symphonies are often played by full symphony orchestras. Mozart's, on the other hand, are usually performed by smaller ensembles.

Mozart / Bruch / Schumann

Students from the jazz class of the CRR. A tribute to Bill Evans, revisiting the pianist's repertoire with respect and freshness. All audiences. Free admission.

Periscope Trio

An evening at the heart of the Russian steppe, in all its harshness and infinite beauty. Alexandre Kantorow, piano, with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, conducted by Jakub Hrůša. Program: Tchaikovsky, Romeo and Juliet, fantasy-overture; Prokofiev, Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26; Shostakovich, Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Op. 10.

Romeo and Juliet

Three mezzo-soprano voices: the same tessitura but timbres that could hardly be more different. Three young singers, Brenda Poupard, Anouk de Fontenay and Léontine Maridat-Zimmerlin, accompanied by pianist Anne Pagès, sing solo, in duets and in trios. World premiere of La Balade des Vierges by Jean-Marc Fouché.

One, Two, Three Voices

Jardins de la Salle Jean-Louis Herrault

Family performance for children ages 5 and up. A small opera for one narrator and four musicians, composed by Pascal Dusapin to a libretto by Leigh Sauerwein, premiered in 2002 in Nanterre.

Momo the Clown

Domaine d'O

A recital as Babayan likes them: unexpected and varied, a journey that takes us from Schubert to the land of the Wizard of Oz. Sergei Babayan has devised an ideal program for a summer late afternoon. A program made largely of transcriptions: Schubert and Schumann lieder transcribed by Liszt, Rachmaninoff romances reduced for solo piano, a miniature by Kreisler revised by Rachmaninoff.

Rachmaninoff / Liszt

Opéra Comédie

Children's show for ages 5 and up. A short opera composed by Pascal Dusapin to a libretto by Leigh Sauerwein, for one narrator and four musicians (duration 40 min, no intermission).

Audiences know the Quatuor Modigliani well, and here they perform two gems from their repertoire, one of them a rarity by Smetana. It is customary to divide Beethoven's output, and especially his string quartets, into three successive periods. Op. 18 No. 6, on this program, is the last of the first period and brilliantly shows how Beethoven takes up the form Haydn left him and fills it with a lyricism unknown before him. The Scherzo, shaken by syncopations, and the final Allegro, introduced by a stunning Adagio titled La malinconia, are pages of unprecedented beauty. As for Smetana's First Quartet, which sent Liszt into raptures, it evokes, as its title indicates, different ages of life that Smetana described in a letter: the arrival of destiny, the joy of living, romantic passion, and national pride. A program one might call Romantic, but it is easy to forget that while surrendering to the warmth of this music from Bohemia.

Beethoven Smetana

Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young… The trio Bird Season invites us on a journey through the golden age of folk, celebrating a repertoire of classics that, much like fine wines, only grow better with time. From the stage of the 1960s to contemporary creation, Marlène, Charlotte and Rakel explore a repertoire of evergreens, songs that have become timeless and whose melodic and poetic strength spans generations.

BIRD SEASON

Haydn and Beethoven, the fine morning of the string quartet. Among the sixty-eight quartets left to us by Joseph Haydn, those of Op. 76 belong to his mature works. Here the composer gives free rein to his fancy, plays with tempos, and blends exuberance with melancholy; in short, he writes works outside of time, as Beethoven would do in turn a quarter century later with his late quartets. "It is difficult not to think of Beethoven's Seventh Quartet in the opening of the Quartet Op. 76 No. 4 'Sunrise'," writes musicologist Michel Rusquet, however. It is precisely this Seventh Quartet, one of the three dedicated to Count Razumovsky, that the Quatuor Elmire has chosen to perform. A quartet introduced by a Allegro that could not be more vigorous, punctuated by a slow movement of a grief close to the Funeral March of the Eroica Symphony.

Quatuor Elmire

Église Saint-Julien

Un florilège de grandes pages du répertoire symphonique pour le concert traditionnel du 14 juillet en plein air.

Concert du 14 juillet

Hôtel de Ville

Song cycle of twenty-four Lieder, D. 911, on poems by Wilhelm Müller. Matthias Goerne (baritone) and Mikhail Pletnev (piano).

Winterreise

Crowned with five Grammy Awards, the collective led by bassist Michael League is back on the road to promote its latest album, Somni.

GroundUp Music presents Snarky Puppy

Saxophonist Kenny Garrett, with his irresistible charisma, returns with a repertoire brimming with fervor, where jazz, R&B and gospel blend with the intensity of African and Caribbean rhythms.

Sounds from the Ancestors

The opera returns to the Montpellier Festival! Tristan and Isolde, the gospel of Western love, an epic and deeply moving work exploring the power of human emotions and the sacrifices they demand.

Tristan and Isolde

FIP 360: The live electronic experience in immersion. The final night of the Tohu-Bohu festival, featuring Âme (live, Frank Wiedemann), Tal Fussman and Chloé.

TOHU-BOHU X FIP 360

A majestic piano recital, in simple style, featuring two sonatas by Beethoven and Liszt, which are among the most captivating works in the repertoire.

Beethoven / Chopin / Liszt

Tribute to Erik Satie for big band and jazz quartet, marking the centenary of his death. Concert recorded by France Musique.

Johane Myran Red Star Orchestra: "La Marche du Chien Noir: Hommage à Satie"

Cité internationale de la Danse

TOHU-BOHU X FIP 360. FIP 360: immersive live electronic music. Closing night, fully rescheduled after the 2025 edition was canceled due to weather. Myd presents his latest album in a live 360 show with Hervé Déjardin; Deep closes the Friday night.

AMS / MYD / DJ DEEP

Masterclass with mezzo-soprano Marianne Crebassa for young singers, presented as part of the Festival Radio France Occitanie Montpellier. Free entry with reservation.

Masterclasse Marianne Crebassa

Médiathèque Centrale Émile Zola

Robert Schumann sublime le lied ; Marianne Crebassa rayonne, de l'intime à la mélodie française. Cycle Frauenliebe und Leben, op. 42, with a French mélodie programme by Fauré, and Siete Canciones populares españolas by Falla, and songs by Duparc.

L'amour et la vie d'une femme

Piano recital: from Mendelssohn to Schubert, with nods from Romanticism to the Beatles. A dazzling programme by Bertrand Chamayou.

Bertrand Chamayou – From Mendelssohn to Lennon

If there is one personality who has pushed the boundaries of jazz for large ensembles, it is certainly her! For this exceptional appearance in France, Maria Schneider joins forces with the Spanish Clasijazz Big Band to create a unique bridge between American tradition and Mediterranean echoes.

Maria Schneider & Clasijazz Big Band feat. Antonio Lizana

Opening night of Tohu-Bohu X FIP 360: three DJs and producers (Bambi, UR Trax, Tatyana Jane) in an immersive electronic live set.

BAMBI / U.R. TRAX / TATYANA JANE

Since its founding, the Ensemble Théodora has explored the ties between European nations at the turn of the 18th century. This program celebrates the creativity of European composers who settled in London in the 17th and early 18th centuries.

A Tour of Europe in the 18th Century

Église Saint-Christophe

Guided tour of the Musée Fabre on the theme of thwarted loves, offered before an opera or concert of the Festival Radio France Occitanie Montpellier. Discover works by Jean Raoux, Antoine Coypel and François André Vincent.

Thwarted Loves at the Musée Fabre

Musée Fabre

An intense tragédie lyrique in which love, destiny and passion meet in deeply moving music. A staged version of an opera in three acts, blending music, theatre, dance and stage machinery effects.

Dido and Aeneas

Since its founding, the Ensemble Théodora has explored the connections between European nations at the turn of the eighteenth century. This program celebrates the creativity of European composers who settled in London in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

A Tour of Eighteenth-Century Europe

Église Saint-Bernard

A collection of landmark in-depth interviews on cultural creation in all fields: literature, cinema, the performing arts, the visual arts, architecture… Broadcast all summer on France Culture, franceculture.fr and the Radio France app

The France Culture Masterclasses

Montpellier Rectorat

A legend: the term shouldn't be used lightly, but that is exactly what Charles Lloyd is. Now the keeper of a musical wisdom that only time can bestow, the Memphis-born saxophonist renews, at every performance, the same song, one imbued with beauty and freedom.

Charles Lloyd feat. Gerald Clayton, Harish Raghavan & Kweku Sumbry

Masterclass for cello led by baroque cellist Christian-Pierre La Marca, with cellists Albéric Boullenois and Célia Garetti-Nicole participating. Free admission on reservation.

Masterclass Christian-Pierre La Marca

Accordion recital: a program of classical repertoire, song and original works, as part of the Festival Radio France Occitanie Montpellier.

Angel Villart, accordion

Église Saint-Antoine

Reinoud Van Mechelen leads his ensemble in a program that sees in Bach the father of musicians. The program includes two cantatas by Bach, the Suite BWV 1067, and a cantata by Melchior Hoffman.

Bach, Cantatas and Suite

The genealogy of the piano trio is every bit as distinguished as that of the string quartet. Brahms, for instance, gave the form of the trio uniting piano and two string instruments, the singing violin and the consoling cello, three illustrious treatments. The composer himself took part, in 1882, in the premiere of his Second Trio, the one whose melodic invention is arguably the richest. The only piano trio by Smetana, by contrast, dates from 1855, the period when the unfortunate musician lost his little daughter Friederike. Yet this teeming score cannot be reduced to the poignant recitative of the first movement, which is followed through to the end by a magnificent surge mingled with folk references typical of the composer's native Bohemia.

Trio Parhélie

Espace Paul Doumer

If one were to draw up a list of the most influential jazz guitarists of the past fifty years, there is no doubt that Bill Frisell would rank near the top, somewhere between his colleagues Pat Metheny and John Scofield. This rare visit to Montpellier already promises to be an event! Jazz guitarist? The label is perhaps a bit narrow for this gentle dreamer of the six-string, who over his career has collaborated with personalities as diverse as Paul Motian, John Zorn and Elvis Costello, while recording with stars of the caliber of Norah Jones, Paul Simon and Robert Plant. Deeply rooted in the soil of Americana, his music embraces country, blues, folk, gospel and rock 'n' roll all at once, in a highly personal synthesis free of any cliché. Accompanied by his faithful trio and by New Orleans saxophonist and clarinetist Greg Tardy as special guest, this marvelous storyteller of musical tales promises to take us on a long dreamlike journey, of disquieting and timeless beauty.

Bill Frisell Trio + Greg Tardy

Théâtre de l'Agora

A bold survey of the musical tastes of an artist who, at the age of nine, won the young Chopin competition… presided over by Martha Argerich.

From Bach to Prokofiev

From Bach's Chaconne to Paganini's Caprices, a little odyssey of the violin. Solo violin recital: Bartók, Paganini, Kurtág, Bach and Ysaÿe.

Emmanuel Coppey, violin

Opening evening of the festival devoted to film music, conducted by Chloé Dufresne. Free admission, Place de l'Europe in Montpellier. Suitable for all audiences.

Festival Radio France Occitanie Montpellier

Jul 18, 2026

Congo Square

Jul 18, 2026

Mahler 5

Festival Radio France Occitanie Montpellier