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To mark the 40th anniversary of the twinning between Nagaoka and Romainmôtier, the AlmaM Association is offering a series of readings and concerts from September 12th to 21st, 2026, focusing on the writer Akira Mizubayashi, winner of the 2025 Prix de la Francophonie from the French Academy, whose writing is intimately linked to music.

This very  closeness between the word and the note led us to imagine these two events where literature and music respond to each other with exceptional performers chosen by the author for the particular sensitivity of their interpretation.

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AKIRA MIZUBAYASHI

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Born in Sakata in 1951, is a Japanese writer who writes in both Japanese and French. While studying at the Tokyo National University of Foreign Languages and Civilizations (UNALCET), he also studied at Paul Valéry University in Montpellier in 1973. A visiting scholar at the École Normale Supérieure on rue d'Ulm from 1979, he defended his doctoral thesis on Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1982. From 1983 to 2017, he taught French in Tokyo, at Meiji University, UNALCET, and then Sophia University. After publishing his first six books in Japanese, he began writing in French in 2011, a language he says he "inhabits," while also affirming his attachment to Tokyo, where he lives. He is the recipient of numerous literary awards.

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VOCE QUARTET

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For twenty years, the Voce Quartet has cultivated its vision of the string quartet as a polymorphic and adventurous ensemble. Winners of numerous international competitions, they tour the world's stages — from Helsinki to Cairo, from Tokyo to Bogotá — championing the great classical repertoire while also creating music by contemporary composers.

SONIA WIEDER-ATHERTON

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Born in San Francisco of Romanian and American descent, Sonia Wieder-Atherton grew up in New York and then Paris. Admitted at a young age to the Conservatoire National Supérieur in Maurice Gendron's class, she furthered her studies in Moscow with Natalia Shakhovskaya at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory. Upon returning to France, she won the Rostropovich Competition at the age of 25. Appointed an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters (2020), she performed at the interment of Simone Veil at the Panthéon in 2018.