Ménélik Plojoux-Demierre
Biography
Born in Geneva in 1975, Ménélik Plojoux Demierre is artists manager and music producer at the ProMusica concert agency in Geneva. After passing the Swiss matriculation exam in arts at Collège Claparède, he continued his studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels of La Cambre in Brussels, Belgium. Although this course was not particularly musical, he used it to create a festival in Uzès, France, and as an impresario.
In 2002 after meeting the new management of the Geneva International Music Competition he suggested creating a support programme for winners of the competition which was, at the time, in a phase of development. An initial action plan was quickly implemented with around ten concerts. Fifteen years and some 600 concerts later, the project continues with a network of partners on all five continents supporting the competition’s winners; it includes recording and other productions, such as a biennial festival with former winners and the Geneva prize winners’ workshop established in 2017 with the support of Bernard Meier.
Although he is engaged more than ever before in helping young artists, he nonetheless shares his time between Switzerland and his home in the south of France, where his accomplishments include founding a contemporary music and live performance festival.
Events
Une semaine d'échanges et de dialogues entre des lauréats du Concours de Genève et des professionnels du monde de la musique et de la scène, entre cas pratiques, exemples personnalisés et ouverture sur les aspects "indirectement artistiques" de la vie du jeune musicien.
This year’s Prizewinners’ Workshop 2020 was supposed to be held during the first week of May and bring together half a dozen recent prizewinners of the Geneva Competition (2019) along with a few students from the HEM, who are completing a Masters in specialized music performance as soloist. Due to the sanitary crisis caused by the Covid-19, this workshop could unfortunately not take place in person, despite it having been postponed to the month of September. The Geneva Competition therefore decided to innovate by offering a Prizewinners’ e-Workshop, which will be held online during more than a month.
The content of this e-Workshop has been adapted to fit the present circumstances and conditions of implementation, whilst maintaining its initial objectives and values. Privileging a method of personal coaching, it will focus on two main themes: career management and digital & audio-visual training.
This alternative experience will take place over a period of more than a month and will include personal evaluations, collective broadcasts, one-on-one interviews and times of independent work. During the last day of the Workshop, participants will be given the opportunity to meet up (hopeful in person) to share their experience with others and present their work. This final meeting will be a great way to reinforce the collective nature of the project, whereas the eWorkshop will be essentially run at a distance.
Participants in the eWorkshop will be given the mission of completing two distinct and complementary personal projects: the first one on the theme of career management and the second one resulting in the production of a short video. By addressing issues that are crucial to the development of a young musicians’ career, these projects follow the objectives fixed by the Geneva Competition’s Prizewinners Workshop since its creation in 2017.
The e-Workshop is managed by the Geneva Competition and its line producer ProMusica Concert Agency. Both of these entities provide recognized professional competences to participants (artistic management, financial management, production, communication, public relations, etc.), as well as an experience of several years in event organization.
The permanent team will be reinforced by specialists in multimedia, as well as a journalist- presenter and a technical manager. These personalities will form the reference team in charge of organizing and animating the eWorkshop.
This 4th edition of the Prizewinners workshop of the Concours Genève is supported by the Art Mentor Foundation (Luzern, Switzerland).