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Bruno Procopio

Aug 07
2
AAder

Alice Ader

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Alice Ader is a graduate of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris (unanimous first prize in 1963) and of the Akademie für Musik und Darstellunde Kunst of Vienna (Reifeprüfung in 1970, with special mention from the jury). She studied with Geneviève Dehelly and Jasques Fevrier (in France) and with Bruno Seidlhofer (in Austria from 1967 to 1970).

She was a winner in the Marguerite Long International Competition.

Several periods of study in Salzburg allowed her to explore the world of Lieder, and active involvement with this repertory was a vital addition to her solo career.

Alice Ader has given recitals and played concertos both in France and abroad, in well known places like Mozarteum, Konzerthaus (Vienna), Gulbenkian, Théâtre St Louis (Lisbon) Gaveau, Châtelet, Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Salle Messiaen (Paris), La Monnaie (Brussels), Musée des Beaux Arts (Madrid), Wigmore Hall (London), Düsseldorf, Prague, Budapest, Moscow…

She plays as a soloist for radio and television : Radio France, the BBC, Radio Lisbon, BBC Canada, Südwestfünk…

In the last few years, she has done a lot of recordings, Debussy, Messiaen, Hersant… All of them have been greated with the highest acclaim and most have been awarded prizes.

Those last time, she recorded the Art of fugue (live CD), the complete Moussorgsky piano works, Sonatas of Scarlatti and soon will be recording Maurice Ravel works for piano.

Alice Ader plays as well contemporary music and the classical repertory.

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Aug 07
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1 - Portrait Jay 2 @ Nina Bernfeld

Fuoco E Cenere, Jay Bernfeld

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1 - Portrait Jay 2 @ Nina Bernfeld

Now in its fteenth year, Fuoco E Cenere has established itself as an arena for sensational musical adventures. The ensemble has ever since retained an often remarked daring in its choice of repertoire. Eager to preserve the unique freshness of the concert-going experience Fuoco E Cenere has devised quite a number of original entertainments, including recent intriguing mixes of music and puppetry, or music and haute cuisine.

Story telling through song and translating emotions and dreams into music are the missions we have readily accepted. In our musical laboratory we eagerly juxtapose, metamorphose outstanding works, permitting the listener to view these gems of a bygone era in a new light, frequently imagining entertainments that delight both young and old, the novice and the connoisseur.

Spurred on by director Jay Bernfeld’s love of song, Fuoco E Cenere has been pleased to collaborate with many of today’s nest voices as well as the stars of tomorrow. The ensemble is proud to have presented several forgotten masterpieces to an appreciative public. The ensemble boasts ten recordings covering 1000 years of music. Fantasy in Blue – Purcell meets Gershwin was hailed by Le Monde as a ‘veritable knock- out’. The ensemble’s recording of Marco da Gagliano’s little known masterpiece La Dafne was awarded the prestigious Orphée d’Or by the Académie du Disque Lyrique, and unanimously lauded by international critics.

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Aug 07
0
Ens Hemolia

Ensemble Hemiolia

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Ens Hemolia

Based in northern France, Hemiolia Ensemble was created in 2008 by cellist Claire Lamquet. More than a hundred concerts in France and Europe shaped the tone from the set of variable geometry room on historically informed instruments and whose most musicians have studied in both France and Italy.

Lamquet Claire graduated from the Lille National Conservatory, the National Conservatory of Paris and the Bellini Conservatory in Palermo.
She is the founder and artistic director of the Ensemble Hemiolia, with whom she recorded the composer’s work northerner Marie Alexandre Guenin (critically acclaimed recordings: Diapason and 4 5/5 Muse Baroque). She obtained in June 2010 Jacolin-Dufresne Award Fondation de France for this work.
Passionate about chamber music, she released a CD in 2013 dedicated to the work for string trio romantic composer Pierre Crémont (Socadisc Distribution) with Concordia Ensemble and a CD “Handel” with the Ensemble Hemiolia ( NewArts International Distribution).
Claire Lamquet occurs in many concert seasons and festivals in France and abroad (Saintes festival, Toulouse les Orgues Festival, Mozart Festival in Augsburg, Suona Francese Festival, Festival dei Saraceni, Liaisons Musicales festival, Embaroquement Instant festival, festival Ars Terra, International Festival Harpe en Avesnois, Maison de la Radio …).
With the trio Concordia, she was invited for a tour in Russia (September 2014: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Rybinsk, Jaroslav) with trios Pierre Crémont. The tour was dubbed an educational project with the Baroque Orchestra of the Moscow Conservatory, which occurred with the trio Concordia in a program of French music after 3 work days around Peter Crémont.
She published an article for the journal eighteenth century (Marie-Alexandre Guenin between Enlightenment and Romanticism – éd.PUF), and collaborated on the book “The Italian violin” (Opera of Dijon, Harmonia Mundi).
Claire Lamquet holds a degree in philosophy. Holder of the State Diploma as arts and winner of the Competition of the Territorial Civil Service, she teaches part-time at the Conservatoire d’Arras.

 

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Aug 07
0
JBM0010∏Jean-Baptiste Millot

Quatuor Manfred

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JBM0010∏Jean-Baptiste Millot

In 1986 four musicians, graduates of internationally renowned institutions (Julliard School, New York – Geneva Conservatory – National Conservatory, Paris) decided to found the Manfred Quartet. As early as 1989 the quartet won two prestigious international competitions: Banff (Canada), becoming the first European string quartet to win first prize there, and Evian (France), which made the Manfred the leading prize-winning French quartet of its generation.

Thus the Manfred Quartet has been invited to play with a large number of well-known musicians: Mstislav Rostropovich, Yuri Bashmet, Tatiana Nikolaieva, Bruno Canino, Anne Queffélec, Jean-Claude Pennetier, Claire Désert, Nicolas Bône, Raphaël Oleg, Florent Héau, Pascal Moraguès, Paul Meyer, Romain Guyot, Raphaël Pidoux, Marc Coppey, Manuel Fischer-Dieskau, Xavier Phillips, Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, Pierre-Yves Pruvot…

For 30 years, the Manfred Quartet has shared its passion and its performances with audience not only in France but also in Germany, the Netherlands, England, Italy, Spain, the United States, China, Indonesia, Singapore and Chile.

The Manfred Quartet’s discography reflects its attachment to the romantic repertoire and to early 20th century composers. Its recordings of Berg (ffff Télérama), Schoenberg, Janacek, Smetana and Prokofiev met with great critical acclaim, as did those of Schumann, Mozart (5 Diapasons) and Chausson (4 Diapasons, 4 stars Classica).

Since 1986, the Manfred Quartet is in residence in Dijon where it has created its own season. After having played the complete works for string quartet of Haydn, Schubert and Beethoven, the Manfred Quartet is now presenting all the Mozart and Jadin string quartets. Its partnership with Palazzetto Bru Zane – the French romantic music Centre, in Venice – leads the Manfred Quartet to play works of little-known composers such as T. Gouvy, G. Onslow, G. Samazeuilh, much appreciated by a keen to discover other repertories.

The desire to broaden its musical horizons has led the Quartet to develop projects with jazzman Raphael Imbert and his group Nine Spirit resulting in two recordings: Bach-Coltrane (Zig-Zag Territoires 2008) and Heavens, (Mozart and Duke Ellington – Harmonia Mundi 2013).

Also, with the singer Marion Rampal, the Quartet has created a programme of 1930’s music – cabaret and film (Bye Bye Berlin! at the Grand Théâtre, Dijon Opera, in January 2015). A new recording of this repertory is due in November 2016 adding another element to the Quartet’s already considerable discography.

In order to continue sharing its enthusiasm for chamber music, the Manfred Quartet founded in 1994 « Musiques » en Voûtes », an itinerant festival in the four provinces of the Burgundy region, which combines national heritage and chamber music. Thus the Quartet, often with prestigious guest artists, gives concerts under the romanesque arches of churches or chapels in small villages and reaches out to a new public.

It has always been important for the Manfred Quartet to work with young musicians. The « Musiques en Voûtes » festival has for many years included a chamber music workshop and improvisation sessions with the jazz saxophonist Raphaël Imbert. Then in 2014 the Quartet created a season « Hors les murs » in partnership with music schools in the Côte-d’or province of Burgundy, combining teaching sessions with very young musicians and concerts. These events, but also numerous masterclasses in France and abroad, give the Manfred Quartet the possibility to pass on to the next generation of musicians not only what they learnt from their teachers but also from their own experience over the years.

The Manfred Quartet receives support from the Ministry of Culture and Communication through the Regional Council of Burgundy.

 

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Aug 04
2
Ens Antiphona

Ensemble Antiphona

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Ens Antiphona

Created in 1996 by Rolandas Muleika, its artistic director, the Antiphona Ensemble promotes a vast vocal repertoire and endeavours to (re)discover some forsaken though remarkable works dating back from the Gregorian period up to the 19th century. The Antiphona Ensemble devotes all of its voices to serving early types of music from Perotin’s polyphonies and Monteverdi’s madrigals  to the finest  pages of Baroque music all over Europe. Among its latest ‘coups de coeur’ stand out  Bernard-Aymable Dupuy and  Joseph Vallette-de-Montigny the talented composers  who used to live in Toulouse as  well as  Czech composer  Jan Dismas Zelenka whose emotional expression  is close to Bach and Mozart’s. Eager to promote the musical heritage of their region, Rolandas Muleika and the Antiphona Ensemble have devoted the largest part of their yearly programming to Villefranche-de-Rouergue’s manuscripts for quite a few years. This collection of unpublished archives of outstanding musical quality, totally forgotten and bound to disappear, is being minutelyrestored and preserved. Thanks to its musicological and stylistic expertise, the Antiphona Ensemble can revive musical pieces by performing them aptly with respect to the specificities  of each period, each place or each composer. But the Antiphona Ensemble is also determined  to re-interpret this early music repertoire by blending it with contemporary pieces or pieces taken from the traditional repertoire. Thus the Ensemble re-creates some musical forms while modernizing them at the same time.  For instance, a contemporary piece on the theme of the Way of Saint James especially composed for us  or a new version of the first act of Monteverdi’s Orfeo with  a percussion ensemble are part of next season’s programme.

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Aug 03
0
JComte-DPascal

Jérôme Comte & Denis Pascal

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JComte-DPascal

Jerôme Comte

After studying in Geneva and Paris with teachers of the eminence of Thomas Friedli, Pascal Moragues and Michel Arrignon, Jérôme Comte was noted at several international competitions in Paris, Prague and Munich and was awarded scholarships by the Meyer Foundation for cultural and artistic development and the Foundation d’Entreprise Groupe Banque Populaire. In 2003, he became the first young musician to be sponsored by the Charles Cros Academy. Jérôme Comte embarked on a career as chamber musician that has taken him all over the world. Among the internationally acclaimed orchestras with which he has performed are the London Symphony Orchestra, The Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and the Ensemble Intercontemporain, which he joined at the age of 25. The following year he performed Yan Maresz ‘s Éclipse for clarinet and ensemble under the direction of Pierre Boulez at the Festival d’Aix en Provence. In 2009, he again appeared with Boulez in Elliot Carter’s Clarinet Concerto during a tour of major european concerts halls. He recorded the work for Alpha Classics in 2016 with the Ensemble Intercontemporain under the direction of Matthias Pintscher. In 2010 he was invited to perform Boulez’s Dialogue de l’ombre double on the occasion of a retrospective of the composer at the Louvre. Since then he has regularly played the work. Among significant milestones in Jérôme Comte’s career have been his performances of Unsuk Chin’s clarinet Concerto under the direction of Matthias Pintscher at the New World Center in Miami and Hans Werner Henze’s Le Miracle de la Rose at the Cité de la Musique-Philharmonie de Paris.

Jérôme Comte plays exclusively on a Buffet Crampon Tosca Green line Clarinet.

 

Denis Pascal

Denis Pascal became one of the last significant disciples of Pierre Sancan at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris. He attented the classes of Jacques Rouvier, Leon Fleisher and György Sandor.

He won several international prizes, such as the competitions of Lisbon and Zurich, and the Concert Artist Guild Competition in New York and the Cziffra, Lavoisier and Menuhin Foundations, and finished his studies with György Sebök in Bloomington, Indiana, where he received the Artist Diploma.

Denis Pascal plays many solo and chamber music performances in Europe, USA and Asia : Théâtre des Champs-Elysées (Paris), Théâtre du Châtelet (Paris), Merkin and Alice Tully Concert Halls (New York), Kennedy Center (Washington)…and with orchestras such as
National Orchestra of Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux, New Japan Philharmonic, San Francisco Chamber Philharmonic, Pacific Chamber Orchestra…

He has been awarded several times for his recordings of Liszt’s 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies, receiving the «Choc du Monde de la Musique», «Classica Award» and the Prize of the Franz Liszt Association.

He is also very interested in rare music and had great success with the world première of Joseph Marx’s piano music. In march 2008, his recording dedicated to Jean Wiener’s music was awarded by a Diapason d’Or.
Numbers of composers have written for him, such as Régis Campo, Jean-Philippe Bec and Guillaume Connesson.

Denis Pascal has been lately appointed piano teacher at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique of Lyon in January 2010, then of Paris in may 2011.

His latest CD was released last February : Schubert’s sonata (La Musica Label).

 

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Jul 22
0
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Natalia Valentin

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A native of Venezuela – and a star pupil of the country’s El Sistema musical education – Natalia Valentin’s flourishing artistic career reflects her enthusiasm and personal charisma. Among her recent successes, Natalia undertook a series of over thirty concerts in Europe and the Americas in partnership with the French Romantic Music Center in Venice, also known as the Palazzetto Bru Zane. She is a frequent international guest, both for chamber music and as a concerto soloist with orchestras around the world. She has recently performed in prestigious festivals in France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Venezuela, Mexico, the Bahamas, Brazil, and the USA.

Natalia also featured prominently in the recent Chopin Year festivities at the Paris Philharmonic (the Cité de la Musique). The concerts saw Natalia perform on the very Broadwood fortepiano that Chopin played during his final tour in England.

Natalia is an exclusive recording artist with French record label Paraty Productions. Her first album – featuring Beethoven’s Rondos and Bagatelles – was highly praised by the press, receiving numerous distinctions including 5 Diapasons, Top 5 of the Year from Fanfare Magazine in the US, and the CLIC of classiquenews.com

First and foremost, Natalia is passionate about performing on historical instruments. She seeks to convey the techniques and interpretive specificities of performance on the fortepiano, informed by historical documents and methodology dating from the Classical period. Excelling both as a performer and a pedagogue, she filters this knowledge through the lens of modern, dynamic pedagogy. Her fortepiano pedagogy is based on musicological research, the evolution of instrument manufacturing, and on the interaction between composers and their changing instruments. Her masterclasses are a fascinating journey, opening up performance possibilities that can be integrated into modern piano technique.

Natalia recently joined the faculty of Paris’s 10th arrondissement Conservatory. She is also a frequent speaker at major South American universities as well as Assistant Professor at the Accademia Europea Villa Bossi in Italy. In recent years she was tenured Professor at two conservatories in Parisian suburbs: Bobigny and Vigneux-sur-Seine.

The recipient of several First Prize distinctions, Natalia Valentin studied at the Paris Regional Conservatory (CRR) before completing her studies at the Paris National Conservatory (CNSM). Her mentors included Billy Eidi, Patrick Cohen, Pierre Cazes, and Kenneth Weiss. She went on to hone her artistry under Susan Alexander-Max and Arthur Schoonderwoerd.

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CUENCA 2014 : Natalie Valentin joue Alkan (grand reportage vidéo) from classiquenews.com on Vimeo.

Jul 22
0
silas Bassa

Silas Bassa

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silas Bassa

Born in Santa Fe – Argentina, he began his piano studies at the early age of five and followed a formation in piano and music at the local conservatory of Santa Fe. Later he moved to Buenos Aires for attending the National Conservatory and to study with renowned Maestro Aldo Antonganzzi. After receiving First Prize from the Buenos Aires Conservatory he was selected for a master class given in Buenos Aires by Maestro Bruno Leonardo Gelber. This performance offered him a scholarship to follow his studies with M. Gelber in Monaco, France.

A year later, Silas travelled to Paris and met the well known pianist and pedagogue Monique Deschaussées who encouraged him to study with her and to stay in Paris. He enriched his piano skills and repertory by following a suite of advance degrees at a regional conservatory in Paris.

Throughout his career, he performed numerous solo and chamber music concerts at important theatres and halls of South America, Europe and Asia.

In addition to the traditional classical music performances and to his brilliant interpretations of the core piano repertoire, Silas works also on his own music as a composer.

Constantly searching for new ways of expression, he created several artistic projects working in association with different directors, choreographers, actors and video projections.

In 2015 he recorded his first solo album “Oscillations” for Paraty Productions label- Harmonia Mundi distribution- which had a great press and public reception. The album held the top spot on the French Fnac charts of best-selling contemporary classical music albums and has been selected by Radio France (France Musique) as one of the best albums of 2015.

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Jul 20
1
Photo: Marco Borggreve

Le Parnasse français

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Photo: Marco Borggreve

The Parnasse français ensemble, formed in 2000 by Louis Castelain, specializes in early music from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. The ensemble varies in size, from a larger form (with a choir, orchestra, and soloists) when the program consists of grands motets, to just an orchestra or a small number of musicians for madrigal or motet programs.

One of the unique aspects of the Parnasse français is that every concert includes at least one world re-premiere, which is the fruit of musicological research conducted in various library archives. Louis Castelain thus reconstructs scores based on manuscripts, recomposing the music as necessary when parts are missing. As a reflection of this work and of the Parnasse français performances, the ensemble has its own collection of scores (the “Maîtres du Parnasse français” collection) at the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles publishing house.

Since 2001, the Parnasse français has been invited to perform in many festivals (including the Festival de Sablé, the Grandes Journées Charpentier in 2004 and the Grandes Journées Lully in 2008, the Automne musical du Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, the Oudemuziek Utrecht, and the Festival de Pontoise). Its concerts have been broadcast on television (for the Arte channel, specifically the documentaries Lully l’incommode and Rameau l’incompris magnifique, and Maestro, about music during Henri IV’s time), on the radio (including for the stations France Musique, Radio Classique, and Radio Suisse Romande), and have been recorded (the Grands motets de Mondonville and Campra by MBF).

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Jul 20
0
E concentus

Ensemble Concentus Peninsulae / Vasco Negreiros

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E concentus

Vasco Negreiros is primarily a conductor. He sees his compositional works not as abstract constructions, but as a matter for musicians to deal with, working gladly with its performers. Negreiros’ interest in composition is hence based on his practical experience as a musician, including a zest for improvisation, much more then on pure rational calculation.Besides his academic studies in conducting, concluded with the Kappell-Meister degree obtained at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst of Heidelberg-Mannheim (Germany), Vasco Negreiros is mainly dedicated to Early Music in Portugal, Spain, Germany and Brazil, although he also embraces other periods and styles. He teaches conducting, among other parallel signatures, in the Aveiro University, as well as in other parts of Portugal and other countries, in Master Classes, such as the Curso y Festival de Música Antigua de Daroca (Spain).

As a musicologist, essayist and editor, he has worked on the overtures by Jerónimo Francisco de Lima, which he published in 2014. On the other hand, his PhD examined the Livro de varios motetes. Officio da Semana Santa. E ovtras cousas, printed in 1648, which he published as a book-CD in 2005 with the National Press of Portugal. When he lived in Brazil, he published the CD Brasil Barroco (1989) including first contemporary performances of colonial music from the Minas Gerais state.

As a composer, he was awarded the 3rd Prize at the International Competition for Composition for Children’s Choir in Varna (Bulgaria). It is precisely within the field of creating works for young people that he mostly develops his compositional career, chiefly in Portugal and Spain, where some of his compositions and arrangements have been recorded. His children’s opera As palavras na barriga [Words in the Belly] — which opened the Festival Dias da Música, at the Centro Cultural de Belém, 2009 — and the musical tale O gato das botas [Puss in Boots], a pedagogical approach to symphonic music, were each performed over twenty times, reaching more than seven thousand children. The CD of the work ‘Peronatus Catus – cujusvis linguae’ [Puss in boots – in any language], in its Portuguese version (O Gato das Botas) , came out in June 2016, by the lable mPmP.

On the last years Vasco Negreiros studied mainly the Portuguese music of the 18th Century, publishing in 2015, for the french lable Paraty, the CD «Rabbia, Furor, Dispetto», featured by Monika Mauch and the Concentus Peninsulae, under his conducting, a monographic CD on operatic works by Jerónimo Francisco de Lima, editing also the several scores of this composer.

He also has been devoting his studies on the music of the Indian subcontinent, as well as on the study of Indian languages. His Sonata Hindustani, published 2015, should be only the first output of this dedication; others should follow soon!

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