Press release

Following the honoris causa doctorate he received from the University of Liège in September, 2009, a title which paid tribute to the musical talent of one of the greatest textual composers and interpreters of the French song tradition, Dick Annegarn wished to entrust to the Ulg a large part of his works, collections and archives.

Photo © ULg - Tilt

In order to formalise this exceptional legacy, the Ulg has decided to create a Dick Annegarn Foundation.

There is much that is of interest in this donation. Researchers will have access to numerous interesting documents in terms of studying texts and more specifically textual genetics: the corpus of the written and sung work of Dick Annegarn, their states of composition, as well as a collection of recordings of the Berber oral tradition. In addition this donation could direct students towards an original field of study, that of Francophone song.

The cession and conservation of Dick Annegarn's documents is inscribed in the wake of identical steps carried out in their day by the writer Georges Simenon and, more recently, the writer and publisher Hubert Nyssen, as well as by the heirs of the 'Les Eperonniers' publishing house, thus positioning the University of Liège as a centre of literary conservation of the first rank in the francophone area.

Photo © Jan Welters

In the short term, the links between Dick Annegarn and the Ulg will also be made concrete at the inauguration of the 'Exèdre Dick Annegarn' hall on the occasion of a private concert that the singer will give on this Tuesday 27 April 2010 at the Ulg, in the old renovated hall of the Sart Tilman cultural centre.

Moreover, the Ulg will each year organise an International Festival of the Word, a public and popular event which will assemble in the Belgian French Speaking Community professionals and amateurs of the word (sung, spoken, composed, etc). The first edition of this festival at Liège, which has already been organised since 2002 by Dick Annegarn in Haute-Garonne, where he lives, will take place between the 10th and 12th September 2010. Artists such as Calogero and Axelle Red are today presented for this first edition of a festival which takes several interesting byways in placing the voice of the French language, in all its various states, in front of challenges as multiple as they are unexpected.

On Dick Annegarn

Dick Annegarn (Hague, 1952) passed his childhood and adolescence in Belgium. His first album, Sacré Geranuim (1973), brought him success thanks to a  quirky humour and poetic texts, close to surrealism and pataphysics. In 1977 he announced his retirement from the disc industry, which he judged apathetic and hypocritical. He did not for all that stop composing and recording throughout the 1970s and 1980s: three albums from this period would be brought together in the 2007 box set 'Les Années Nocturnes.' Since the end of the 1990s Dick Annegarn has made seven albums for the 'Tôt ou Tard' label, from Approche-toi (1997) to Soleil du soir (2008). A great voyager and in external exile, he now lives in France, in a small Gascon village around which he annually organises the Festival of the Word. The University of Liège gave Dick Annegarn the insignia of an honoris causa doctorate in September 2009.
www.annegarn.com

 
Dick Annegarn will give a private concert at the ULg on Tuesday 27 April,  2010 at 18h00 in the old renovated hall of the Sart Tilman cultural centre (University estate, Building B8). On this occasion the cultural centre's hall will be rebaptised in the name of the artist: ' Exèdre Dick Annegarn'  (in Antiquity, an  exèdre was a room for conversation situated at the rear of a portico or a rich residence or a public building where philosophers and rhetoricians met up.

Photo © J.-L. Wertz