Ensemble Irini
Direction : Lila Hajosi
Mezzo-sopranos : Eulalia Fantova et Clémence Faber
Contraltos : Julie Azoulay, Lauriane Le Prev – Gaudois et Marie Pons
Ténor : Benoît-Joseph Meier
Basses : Guglielmo Buonsanti et Alessandro Ravasio
The Irini ensemble, founded in 2014 by Lila Hajosi, is a polymorphic vocal ensemble favoring a cappella work, resolved and determined to create “links which set free” between temporal and musical areas. Its journey goes from the European Middle Ages to Byzantine music, to contemporary music from the banks of the Fertile Crescent to the court of Bavaria via Constantinople. A laureate of the Cité de la Voix de Vézelay, the ensemble is invited to prestigious festivals such as the Festival de Radio France in Montpellier, Sacred Arts of Perpignan and Evron, Voix et Routes Romanes, Sinfonia en Périgord, and those of the Abbey of Sylvanès and of Mont St Michel. In 2018, its first female trio program “Maria Nostra” gave birth to Irini’s first album recorded at the Cité de la Voix and was awarded a “Choc” by the Classica magazine. In 2018 aswell composer Zad Moultaka created Quel mystère que tu aies un corps for Irini (order of the Festival de Chaillol), and Casus Ade in 2022 Irini is committed to promoting early music and appropriating unfamiliar repertoires that are but little represented. With “O Sidera”, the Irini Ensemble turns toward Christian Mysticism through the figures of the Sibyls, the Cherubim, the Mystery of the Incarnation, around the divine “Great Beyond”, where reason vanishes and where spirit and music take the paths of strangeness and dreams. This mixed vocal quintet program puts the Prophecies of the Sibyls by Roland de Lassus into perspective with extracts from the Byzantine liturgy.
