By Michelle Powers
Mathieu Braud is conducting the performance of his life, with a group of people that’s never even played together.
“The world’s best composers walked through the doors of Notre Dame, played in the cathedral – it cannot go silent now,” said Braud.
Notre Dame de Paris has always been a haven for those whose calloused fingers pluck strings and press the keys of woodwinds. But perhaps for the first time, not one note is rising from the bell towers this Easter Sunday.
Instead those musical notes are rising from just across the river Seine.
It’s not a place of majesty and grandeur, like the inside of the cathedral – but the music, the notes and the rhythms are familiar – even if the musicians aren’t. This is a spontaneous concert.
“When we saw it burning we knew we had to do something,” said Braud.
He immediately created a Facebook event, inviting anyone with passion to play.
Nearly thirty performers, from all over the world, gathering together at the homeland for musicians.
Notre Dame became the musical capital of the world in the middle ages. Le Grand Orgue with eight thousand pipes sending melodies to the heavens for centuries. Today there would be songs of praise and resurrection.
“Sometimes music is better than words,” one onlooker commented.