Ensemble Gilles Binchois

Since 1979, Dominique Vellard has inspired and led the destiny of Gilles Binchois ensemble, some 35 years of research and concerts that have generated the creation of some of the essential recordings in the field of medieval music and the Renaissance: a an impressive record catalog dedicated to Gregorian chant, to Machaut, to the Ecole de Notre-Dame, to the Burgundy School, to the first French polyphonies and to the Spanish Golden Age, under the Virgin Classics, Harmonic Records, Ambroisie and Deutsche labels. Harmonia Mundi, Glossa and Aparté, recordings that met the public's enthusiasm as critics and musicologists. The Gilles Binchois Ensemble performs regularly in Europe as well as in Morocco, India, Malaysia, the United States and South America. Dominique Vellard's passion for music ranging from Gregorian chant to the 17th century developed from his childhood, in the Master of Our Lady of Versailles and these repertoires remained present in his personal career as in that of the whole. . Alongside the medieval repertoires that made its reputation, the ensemble has continued to follow the paths of the first Baroque - and sometimes further afield - by investing primarily religious repertoires: Schütz, Buxtehude, Bach, Monteverdi, Gesualdo, Carissimi, Carpenter, Nivers, Boely, until Liszt and Fauré ... If Dominique Vellard's leading role in the blossoming and flourishing of the "French school" of medieval music - and in particular for the completely new interpretation of the Gregorian repertoire - gave him an image of medievalist, his interest in other eras of early music is unwavering. To alternate these repertoires going from the 10th to the 19th century is for the whole a way to revive the enthusiasm, to revitalize the artistic impulse of its members, to avoid to crystallize its interpretations in a straitjacket too primed. In its "variable geometry" operation, the ensemble is based on fifteen or so loyal artists and, over time, integrates young singers and instrumentalists, trained mainly at the Schola Cantorum in Basel. This opening offers these young artists a professional springboard and all new colors and a renewed source of energy. His interest in church music led the ensemble to interpret repertoires which he helped to discover, in close relationship with the musicologists Marie-Noël Colette, Wulf Arlt and Jean-Yves Hameline; Among these rediscovered and recreated repertoires we can cite the tropes, the polyphonies of the 11th century, the nova cantica of the 12th, the Banquet of the Vœu of the 15th century, the Manuscript of Puy, 12th-16th century, the Faux drones of the 16th to the 19th century. The ensemble is annually the privileged guest of the Thoronet International Meeting of Medieval Music, created 25 years ago and has instituted in this context a summer academy whose 9th session will take place in July 2015. This course shows the commitment of its members in the transmission and professional integration, some of these trainees have indeed participated in productions of the ensemble (Cantatas of Bach, Liszt's sacred music, Requiem de Fauré, Vespers of Monteverdi, Italian Lauds). For the past fifteen years, thanks to Dominique Vellard's passion for traditional music, the ensemble has developed projects with musicians from the north and south of India, Spain, Brittany, Morocco and 'Iran. He has created several exciting programs. In the field of contemporary creation, Dominique Vellard devotes part of his time to composition, drawing on his own musical and spiritual formation as well as in his experience and his interest in monodies and polyphonies of oral tradition. He wrote for the members of the ensemble Gilles Binchois mainly vocal pieces. A first recording was published by GLOSSA in 2007: "Vox nostra resonet"; a double CD of his more recent compositions is in the process of being completed, it will be released in early 2015 for the Evidence-Classics digital label and in the "physical" version at Aparté. Professor for several years at the CNSM of Lyon, Dominique Vellard has trained many French interpreters in the repertoires of the Middle Ages. In 1982, he became a professor of interpretation of medieval and renaissance repertoires at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis where students from all over the world came to study and where several generations of interpreters drew the elements of their style and the basis of their knowledge. . Dominique Vellard has more than 50 records to his credit, including forty at the head of Ensemble Gilles Binchois.