KBA: a vocational training programme for modal music
KBA: a vocational training programme for modal music
Kreiz Breizh Akademi [KBA] is a professional musical training course dedicated to modal music.
With approximately 400 hours in the center, KBA includes an original professionalisation support component with a period of creation and performance of shows that stems from the training.
Imagined and directed by Erik Marchand in Brittany since its creation in 2001, this atypical formation has welcomed 8 collectives of 12 to 18 musicians who have each created a show broadcast on professional stages. The training program is now co-directed by an artistic director and pedagogical coordinator.
The specificity of Kreiz Breizh Akademi lies in the fact that it is based on the transmission of the rules of interpretation of modal music (scale, rhythm, variation) and on Breton popular music. The language used in the sung forms is the Breton language in its local variants (that of kan ha diskan and gwerzioù).
The main objectives of the training are:
Teaching musical techniques based on modal understanding
Development of skills in composition, improvisation, methods of arrangement and orchestral playing
Learning stage and recording techniques
The KBA course takes place over three years, including
a professional training cycle of 12 months (discontinuously - between 380 and 400 hours of training in the center depending on the collective) which trains in modal music of learned and popular tradition.
a period of creation with the support of places of reception ensuring the delegated production
a period of 24 months of support in professional practice through the production of concerts and the release of an album, in partnership with professional producer-turner structures and labels
Each collective works on its own artistic color and according to a training program built specifically according to this color.
CALL FOR APPLICATION KBA#11
Artistic direction: Emmanuelle Bouthillier
Certified 400-hour course
In Brittany – 11th session
From Nov. 2025 to Dec. 2026
PUBLIC
Open to singers, acoustic or amplified instruments capable of microtonal playing, and percussion
Mémé K7 – KBA #10
A hybrid orchestra of 10 musicians led by violinist Pierre Droual, this project is both gentle and radical — an homage to the voices of 20th-century women from Lower Brittany and a leap into the future. The ensemble experiments with temperaments and timbres, reshaping archival recordings of traditional songs to reveal a striking and bold new energy. An intense live show, ready to tour from spring 2025.
ON TOUR
May 15, 2025 – Lorient (56), Hydrophone
May 16, 2025 – Ploërdut (56), Koëd Noz
May 24, 2025 – Poitiers (86), Le Confort Moderne
July 14, 2025 – La Châtre (36), Son Continu Festival
July 20, 2025 – Carhaix (29), Vieilles Charrues Festival
October 14, 2025 – Ergué-Gabéric (29), L’Athéna
KBA#11
Applications for the 11th Kreiz Breizh Akademi (KBA) collective open in June 2025. Under the artistic direction of Emmanuelle Bouthillier, this 400-hour discontinuous course will run from November 2025 to December 2026. It will culminate in a performance creation and professional support over two years following the training.
Mémé K7 is a hybrid orchestra weaving lo-fi experiments around a repertoire of 20th-century women’s songs from Lower Brittany — somewhere between tribute and futuristic projection.
2024
Bruulu is an orchestra composed of six professional female musicians and five male musicians from diverse backgrounds: electro, early music, noise, jazz, Irish tradition, Poitou, Auvergne, or Brittany... They explore a new field of modal orchestral experiments.
2022
The Kreiz Breizh Akademi 8th collective, conducted by Erik Marchand, is on tour in 2022
2020
Kreiz Breizh Akademi, 7th collective an expended bagad under influences
It was in the air for a long time, Kreiz Breizh Akademi chose the "expanded" bagad * as the basic expression of this 7th collective. In contact with artists from the world, artisans of the contemporary or traditional modality, India, the Middle East, the Balkans, jazz KBA # 7 bagad has built a unique "sound" where modal improvisations mingle with complex rhythmic and local themes sometimes so close to other modal world (...)
Kreiz Breizh Akademi is supported by the French state and by regional authorities.
Under Erik Marchand’s leadership, artists from all over the world come to Kreizh Breizh Akademi as speakers.
Kreiz Breizh Akademi (KBA) is a vocational training program for musicians dedicated to modal music.
A few words about the Kreiz Breizh Akademi educational project