“The Nere Legend is a hymn to difference, a call for tolerance and an appeal to the hopes of human beings, which echo around the walls. I wanted to compose this piece for the organ, this instrument of accompaniment in both East and West which has borne witness to so much change, to all those moments when history, cultures and music come together” Tarik Benouarka

The theme of the piece is Otherness.

Inspired by a universal vision of humankind, it tells the moving story of Néré, the passer and his muse, the Lady of the Dawn.

Complete strangers, they seek each other out and speak to each other through their songs, which echo beyond the void in a vibrant dialogue that gives the piece its richness and its sense of being both modern and timeless.

The story is set in the time of the first Auroras. In these forgotten times there lived a being whose voice was so beautiful that its sound gave birth to the Light.
This being’s name was Néré.

Néré was ageless. He was the Passer who had the strange power of being able to hold back the Abyss, the river that divided the world into two separate Lands.
Néré’s songs were carried on a wave by the clouds and a path of light appeared, which the people of the two Lands could use, for as long as the song lasted.

This gift might have filled Néré with joy, but there was a price to pay for this miraculous power – great solitude and immense darkness. The half days passed and Néré was always able to banish the Abyss.

Then came that terrible evening when the sky grew suddenly darker than ever, as though darkness wished to claim its power. The young Princess, the daughter of the union between the two Lands, fell into the Abyss and disappeared… Inconsolable and misled by their jealous advisers, the kings accused Néré, who had to flee.

For a long time he roamed the world, casting his despair into the depths of the Abyss, until that dawn when another voice rose up in the distance, changing the Passer’s fate and turning him into a legend.

And so the days and nights of the world were reconciled…

The score is divided into 17 scenes, with Overture and Finale.

It is built around solos and duets in Arabic by two soloists, a tenor and a soprano, Néré and the Lady of the Dawn, sometimes accompanied by a Latin choir representing the People of the two Lands.

Latin and Arabic come together in harmonic and poetic counterpoint, echoing the colours of East and West.