ALLA FRANCESCA

Brigitte Lesne devotes herself entirely to the earliest music. As singer and director of the Discantus ensemble, she specializes in sacred repertory (Gregorian chant and polyphony from the 10th to the 15th centuries). With Alla francesca, she focuses on the secular side of this music—singing, and accompanying herself on various instruments. She also appears in solo recitals and directs choirs, regularly sharing her knowledge in training programs and master classes.  She is a teacher at the Centre de musique médiévale de Paris.

Pierre Hamon plays the entire repertory for recorder—medieval, renaissance, baroque and contemporary—teaching the gamut at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Lyon. As a wind player, he has developed a passion for various traditional instruments from all the continents. He has studied with the most important masters, including Hariprasad Chaurasia for the bansuri flute. He also performs solo recitals covering many fields from ancient to traditional, contemporary, or improvised music. He directs an extensive project on the works of Machaut and has been collaborating regularly with Jordi Savall for more than fifteen years.

Lior Leibovici is an Israeli tenor who obtained a Master’s degree in Early Music at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. He completed a second Master’s degree in Ensemble Singing in the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. He currently performs internationally as a soloist and with the ensembles Profeti della Quinta, Cappella Pratensis, Thélème, the Nederlands Kamerkoor and, of course, with Alla francesca. Lior aims to perform in projects that carry a message and that give the audience something to think about.

Nolwenn Le Guern began musical studies on the cello. After completing the entire curriculum, she turned to early music and studied the viola da gamba with Marianne Muller at the Higher National Conservatory for Music and Dance of Lyon (CNSMDL). In addition to Alla francesca, Nolwenn Le Guern performs very regularly with ensembles such as Ensemble Celadon, Ensemble Alkymia, Notre-Dame de Paris’s vocal ensemble, The concert of Hostel Dieu, Les alizés, and Douce Mémoire. She performs throughout Europe—in Germany, Italy, and Spain—as well as in Canada and India.

Michael Grebil is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and singer, who moves between several sonic and poetic universes. He sings and researches the performance techniques of plucked and bowed stringed instruments such as medieval lute, cittern, and medieval fiddle. He has played for several years with renowned international groups such as Alla francesca and Hesperion XXI. His solo recitals combine his research with his own intuition. He explores the spirit of modality through improvisation, even as he interprets music of the Middle Ages and contemporary repertory.