After conventional cello studies in Nice and Paris, Étienne Mangot turned his attention to performing on period instruments. He studied Baroque cello and viola da gamba, and refined what he had learned at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Lyon. As he is fascinated by all of the “da gamba” instruments - he is constantly engaged in research work on the subject - he works with luthiers and bow-makers to reconstruct rare models with special timbres, in particular a stringed baryton made by Pierre Jaquier. After the Académie de Monaco and the CRRs of Toulon and Nice, he is currently teaching at the Conservatoire de Limoges, he performs and records with Café Zimmermann (Céline Frisch & Pablo Valetti), Les Passions (Jean-Marc Andrieu), Akadêmia (Françoise Lasserre), Les Lunaisiens (Arnaud Marzorati) and La Chapelle Rhénane (Benoît Haller). He plays chamber music alongside Aline Zylberajch, Pierre Hantaï, Hugo Reyne, Flavio Losco, Alice Piérot and Freddy Eichelberger. In 2008, he founded the Filigrane ensemble with fellow musicians, each of whom plays a number of instruments, and who love the grain of sound and the weaving of voices.
Marouan Mankar-Bennis first embarked upon his musical studies in Limoges, and then refined what he had learned with Élisabeth Joyé, who was to play a crucial role in his development. He joined the CNSM de Paris where he won the prizes for harpsichord and basso continuo in Olivier Baumont and Blandine Rannou’s classes. He completed his education at various summer academies where he attended classes taught by Bob van Asperen, Nicolau de Figueredo and Pierre Hantaï.
His work as both a concert performer and a choirmaster led him to work regularly with Vincent Dumestre, the conductor of Le Poème Harmonique with whom he has performed in London, New York, Brussels, Krakow, Saint Petersburg, Vienna and Tokyo. Among these recent collaborations we must mention the recording of Michel Lambert’s Leçons de Ténèbres with the baritone Marc Mauillon for Harmonia Mundi, and the creations based around the 18th-century fairground parody repertoire with the Pécheurs de Perles company.
He is fascinated by research and teaching and holds the Certificat d'Aptitude vocational teaching certificate. He was also awarded the Société Générale musical patronage grant. He currently teaches at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Départemental de Pantin and regularly supervises work experience placements and artistic projects both in France and abroad - for instance at the University of Santander in Spain, the Academy of Music in Vilnius and the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow.
First cousin of the Roi Soleil’s organist, Marguerite Louise Couperin he was described by Titon de Tillet as one of the most celebrated musicians of her time, who “sang with a great lightness in her voice and a marvelously good taste”. Engaged in Versailles in 1702 as a soprano, she became one of the very first women to be able to sing at the tribune of the royal Chapel. It was thus that François Couperin was destined to write the most moving music for her, as part of very lofty instrumental ensembles, which particularly highlighted her voice: two flutes and no deep bass (this was given to the violin).
It is therefore from the name of this sweet muse that Marguerite Louise was born, today made up of the best musicians of the Baroque repertoire under the direction of the organist Gaétan Jarry. In 2015, Marguerite Louise released his first record Motets pour une Princesse (L’Encelade), dedicated to the unpublished masterpieces of Charpentier. Highly praised by critics, this record marks a turning point for the Ensemble then described as one of the most “promising of his generation”.
Since 2016, Marguerite Louise has had the pleasure of collaborating with the Château de Versailles, at the heart of which it performs the sacred music, chamber music and operatic repertoires. In 2018 the ensemble will celebrate the three hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of François Couperin by giving at the church of Saint Gervais. The Ensemble also performed at the Cité de la Musique, the Saint Gervais church in Paris, the Sinfonia Festival in the Perigord, the Sacred Music Festival in Saint Malo and the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. The ensemble distinguished itself in several opera productions such as Pygmalion of Rameau, Charpentier’s Médée and Actéon alongside Tafelmusik and the Opéra-Atelier of Toronto at the Royal Opéra of Versailles, as well as in Berlioz’s Damnation de Faust in collaboration with the Orchestra Les Siècles (François-Xavier Roth). In July 2017, Marguerite Louise interpreted the emblematic Les Arts Florissans by Charpentier at the Château de Versailles, which was made into a recording on the Château de Versailles Spectacles label in September 2018 (5 Diapasons, 5 Classica’s stars, Opéra Magazine Diamond).
Marguerite Louise is a member of the Fédération des Ensembles Vocaux et Instrumentaux Spécialisés. He is supported by the Orange Foundation and the City of Versailles.
Yoann Moulin began his apprenticeship in music with Robert Weddle at the Maîtrise de Caen. There, he came across the harpsichord, which he studied with Bibiane Lapointe and Thierry Maeder and then, after spending some time at the Académie de Villecroze with Ilton Wjuniski, he continued his studies at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse in Paris, attending classes taught by Olivier Baumont, Kenneth Weiss and Blandine Rannou. At around the same time he discovered the clavichord thanks to Étienne Baillot, taught himself to play the organ, studied improvisation alongside Freddy Eichelberger and learned enormously from the teaching of Pierre Hantaï, Skip Sempé, Blandine Verlet and Élisabeth Joyé.
He has since performed recitals and chamber music at various seasons and festivals such as the Philharmonie de Paris, La Roque d'Anthéron, the Folles Journées de Nantes, Oude Muziek - Utrecht, Ambronay, the Fondation Royaumont, Lanvellec, Contrepoint 62, the Venetian Centre for Baroque Music, the Cervantino - Mexico, the Chaise-Dieu, the Palais Jacques Coeur - Bourges, the Académie Bach in Arques-la-Bataille, Saint Riquier, the Philharmonie du Luxembourg, the Actus Humanus festival in Poland and the International Tropical Baroque Music festival in Miami. He has also played with a number of ensembles such as Les Arts Florissants, Le Concert Spirituel, the Clément Janequin ensemble, Cappricio Stavagante, La Fenice, the L’Achéron viol consort, Le Concert Étranger, La Tempête, La Maîtrise du Centre de Musique Baroque in Versailles, Les Musiciens du Paradis, the Les Fêtes Galantes baroque dance company, Das Klub - Cabaret Contemporain and the Jazz La Forge collective.
He has been involved in a number of recordings made for the Alpha and Ricercar labels, including "Au Sainct Nau" with the Clément Janequin ensemble. Samuel Scheidt’s "Ludi Musici" was recorded with L’Achéron and "The Tempest", a record based around Shakespeare’s play, with the La Tempête ensemble, and each of these won a Diapason d'Or. Finally, Freddy Eichelberger, Pierre Gallon and Yoann Moulin recently formed "Une Bande de Clavecin", an old keyboard consort performing both written and improvised Renaissance music..
Alice Piérot is a graduate of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Lyon and has won several international chamber music competitions. She began to take an interest in Baroque music in 1988, became a member of the Musiciens du Louvre (conducted by Marc Minkowski) and was their solo violinist for many years. Since 2004, she has been First Violinist of Le Concert Spirituel (conducted by Hervé Niquet), a role which has seen her perform at the world's finest concert halls.
As a special guest of the Amarillis ensemble, she spends a great deal of her time playing chamber music with, amongst others, Les Veilleurs de Nuit, the Anpapié string trio and, both as a duo and as part of a quartet, with Aline Zylberajch, as the pair of them passionately explore the late 18th-century repertoire together.
Alice gives orchestra and Baroque violin classes at Aix-en-Provence Conservatoire, records for many French and European radio stations, and her extensive discography features more than forty recordings, including Rosaire de Biber’s sonatas (on the Alpha label), which won a Diapason d’Or for the year in 2003.
As she is a country girl at heart, and also has a taste for building projects, in 2002 she took over a former factory near Avignon and turned it into La Courroie, a huge musical venue for concerts, residencies, premiers and recordings (including this one), experimenting with new ways of sharing and performing all kinds of music, from the oldest to the most contemporary.
Guillaume Rebinguet Sudre has been a fan of seventeenth and eighteenth century music ever since he was a boy, and has spent his entire musical life exploring and understanding period instruments. Not only is he a violinist, a harpsichordist, a conductor and a composer, but his interest in instruments also finds expression in his work as a harpsichord-maker and his research into instrument-making. As a result, he has developed his own unusual musical vision, combining various fields of artistic endeavour. As a concert performer he sets out to give spontaneous, living performances that are consistent with the backgrounds against which the works were created. He also shows real relish for projects that take him off the beaten track. He appears - both as a solo performer and as a member of ensembles - at a wide range of festivals and other events, both in France and abroad.
After his time with The Ensemble Baroque Atlantique, he formed the Ensemble HEXATON with the aim of diversifying, delving deeper into and consolidating his own artistic methodology by sharing it with other musicians. He has made a number of recordings that offer an accurate illustration of his musical state of mind, including a first solo record, comprising Tomaso Albinoni’s violin sonatas, which proved popular with both the general public and specialists (4 Diapasons, Muse d’Or), an orchestral project with the Ensemble Baroque Atlantique devoted to Johann Sebastian Bach’s concertos, which involved reconstructing previously unheard versions of a number of works (4 Diapasons, 3 Classica stars), and a highly personal version of all Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas BWV 1001 to 1006, offering a mirrored reading by alternating between performances on the violin, harpsichord and organ (4 Diapasons, 5 Classica “Coup de Cœur” stars). He enjoys sharing what he has learned from his musical experiences by engaging in various educational activities and giving master classes.
He teaches Baroque violin at the Conservatoire de Bordeaux, and also conducts the Period Instruments department’s Baroque orchestra.
Virginie Thomas was unanimously awarded a first prize from the Conservatoire de Toulouse in 2005. In 2006, she was unanimously awarded her professional degree in Early Music, with the judges' congratulations.
She has sung with conductors such as Joël Suhubiette, Emmanuel Krivine, Jérémie Rhorer, Emmanuelle Haïm, Leonardo Garcia Alarcon, Marc Minkowski, Raphaël Pichon, Sébastien Daucé, etc.
She played the Nymph in Lully’s Armide at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées (W. Christie / R. Carsen) and took the role of Céphise in Rameau’s Pygmalion (W. Christie) both in Europe and in New York. She sang, with Christophe Rousset conducting, in Lully’s Phaëton (One of the Hours, the Egyptian Shepherdess) in Beaune, Lausanne, Paris and London. She played Daphné in Charpentier’s Actéon both in France and in the USA (W. Christie), and was a shepherdess and one of Urgande’s lady’s maids in Lully’s Amadis in Versailles and Beaune (C. Rousset). She played Thalie in Rameau’s Platée (W. Christie / R. Carsen), Poetry in Charpentier’s Les Arts Florissans (G. Jarry), Actéon in Charpentier’s Actéon Changé en Biche (G. Jarry), a Nymph in Mondonville’s Titon et L’Aurore (W. Christie / Basil Twist), and Cloris in Lully’s George Dandin for thirty dates at the Athénée theatre in Paris and all over France (Michel Fau / G. Jarry)
In 2023, she played the 2nd woman and the 2nd witch in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (Blanca Li / William Christie) in Madrid, Barcelona, Compiègne and Versailles.