Jean-Claude Malgoire
As oboist and cor anglais player in the Orchestre de Paris, pioneer of the rediscovery of the Baroque era, musicologist, stage director and conductor, Jean-Claude Malgoire has explored a thousand years of music, from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century. A travelling companion of the Ensemble 2e2m and the Ensemble Européen de Musique Contemporaine, founder of La Grande Écurie et la Chambre du Roy, this enquiring spirit and keen researcher communicates his passions and shares the fruit of his investigations, transcending distinctions of periods and schools and offering us new ways to listen to music.

His profound respect for the composer’s original creation involves a significant process of research which he has pursued for fifty years. His quest permits a reinterpretation, a different way of listening, a discovery, indeed a rediscovery of the compositions he chooses so carefully. A born pedagogue, jean-Claude Malgoire wants to excite our curiosity and transmit the extraordinary emotion music can generate.

As artistic director of the Atelier Lyrique de Tourcoing since its foundation in 1981, he has made it into an opera company with a difference, performing an exceptionally varied repertory, a laboratory that enables creations of all kinds to flourish when they are original and of high quality. Such experiences stimulate Jean Claude Malgoire, who is a true craftsman of the performing arts. From one of the very first operas, Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, to Kagel’s Mare Nostrum, by way of the Mozart/Da Ponte Trilogy or The Threepenny Opera, his choices have been interesting, surprising, sometimes risky, but always opportunities for encounters and discoveries that bring emotion in their wake. A missionary of music, an initiator and a federator, Jean Claude Malgoire offers with each season a new expedition, another challenge, across the centuries, across the styles and the different expressions of the performing arts.

La Grande Ecurie et la Chambre du Roy
It was in 1966 that Jean Claude Malgoire, then a principal player in the Orchestre de Paris, formed La Grande Écurie et la Chambre du Roy. This cosmopolitan ensemble of specialised musicians is the oldest period-instrument group in France still active today. Although La Grande Écurie has become particularly well known for its excursions into the Baroque style, in reality its repertory extends from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first. From the resurrection of unknown masterpieces, through the great classics, right up to first performances of contemporary music, this innovative orchestra with an international reputation has made many complete recordings and won many prestigious awards. From museology to musicology by way of instrument making, La Grande Écurie has an intensive programme of activity. Its distinguishing feature is that it pays composers the tribute of performing their work as it was originally written. Each period has its own very specific sound which the instrumentalists strive to reproduce, thus obliging them to possess several sets of instruments (up to seven or eight for the wind players) which they sometimes build themselves. Indeed, some of them have actually become professional instrument makers. In addition to the financial investment this entails, they also undertake in-depth research on written sources and original scores, followed by meticulous study of the musical texts. This quest for authenticity also involves a rigorous process of training choirs and solo singers to ensure a symbiosis between vocal and instrumental interpretation. Over the past fifty years this original ensemble has given more than five thousand concerts on all five continents and made more than 150 recordings, but other adventures are already at the planning stage, since La Grande Écurie et la Chambre du Roy is today looking forward to future seasons!

Chœur de Chambre de Namur
Since its formation in 1987, the Chœur de Chambre de Namur (Namur Chamber Choir) has championed the musical heritage of its native region (concerts and recordings of works by Lassus, Rogier, Hayne, Du Mont, Fiocco, Gossec, Grétry etc.) while at the same time tackling major works of the choral repertory (Handel oratorios, Bach’s masses, motets and Passions, and the Requiems of Mozart and Fauré, among others). The choir is invited to the leading European festivals, and has worked under the direction of such prestigious conductors as Eric Ericson, Marc Minkowski, Jean- Claude Malgoire, Simon Halsey, Sigiswald Kuijken, Jean Tubéry, Federico Maria Sardelli, Patrick Davin, Roy Goodman, Michael Schneider, Philippe Pierlot, Philippe Herreweghe, Peter Philips, Jordi Savall, Christophe Rousset, Eduardo López Banzo, Guy Van Waas and Andreas Scholl. It has made some sixty recordings, notably on Ricercar, which have been much admired by the critics, winning nominations at the Victoires de la Musique Classique and distinctions including the Choc de Classica, Diapason d’Or, Joker de Crescendo, 4F de Télérama, Editor’s Choice in Gramophone, and the Caecilia Prize from the Belgian press. The Chœur de Chambre de Namur has also received the Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros in 2003, the Prix Liliane Bettencourt of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts in 2006, and the Octave de la Musique in 2007 and 2012 in the categories ‘Classical Music’ and ‘Production of the Year’. The young Argentinian conductor Leonardo García Alarcón was appointed artistic director of the Chœur de Chambre de Namur in January 2010. This new collaboration proved an immediate success, both in concert and on disc, with productions such as Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus, Vivaldi’s Vespro a San Marco, Falvetti’s Il diluvio universale and Nabucco, motets and a mass by Giovanni Giorgi, secular cantatas by J. S. Bach, the Mozart Requiem and Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine. The choir’s performing repertory is extremely wide, stretching from the Middle Ages to contemporary music.