Lucile Boulanger took up the viola da gamba at the age of five, receiving instruction from Christine Plubeau; she pursued further studies with Ariane Maurette and with Jérome Hantaï. After earning a first-prize diploma at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional in Paris and a postgraduate diploma at the CRR in Cergy, she entered the Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse to study with Christophe Coin, earning her diploma, awarded unanimously, in 2009.
She is a prizewinner of several international competitions, such as the Bach-Abel-Wettbewerb in Köthen, the Società Umanitaria Musical Competition in Milan, and the Musica Antiqua Competition in Brugge.Highly sought after as a chamber musician, she has appeared and recorded with a number of ensembles and soloists including Philippe Pierlot, François Lazarevitch (Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien), Christophe Rousset, Alexis Kossenko, and Hugo Reyne, while also playing with larger formations such as the ensembles Correspondances (Sébastien Daucé) andPygmalion (Raphaël Pichon), and Les
Talens Lyriques (Christophe Rousset).
Much of her time is devoted to performing music for the consort of viols,
Lucile Boulanger
notably as a member of the Ricercar Consort (Philippe Pierlot), of L’Achéron (François Joubert-Caillet), and of Musicall Humors (Julien Léonard) .She also appears regularly as a recitalist, both in France and abroad. With Arnaud de Pasquale at the keyboard, she has recorded a pair of recitals for the Alpha label (sonatas by J. S. Bach in 2012; trios by C. P .E. Bach and Graun in 2015), each of which earned multiple awards including the Diapason Découverte, Choc Classica, Coup de Coeur Charles Cros, and ffff Télérama.
Recently was released a first opus with the label Harmonia Mundi, dedicated to Forqueray and his passion for Italian violin music: Mr Forqueray’s favourites. This one was considered by critics as “irresistible” and “freeing up the viol”.
Gaëlle Solal
©Richard Dumas
Emilia Baranowska
Emilia Baranowska is a Franco-Bulgarian concert cellist and pedagogue. Having started her international career at the age of 19, she has performed and collaborated with prestigious artists, orchestras and important festivals around the globe. She has recorded with Deutsche Grammophon, Beaux, Festivo. As a cello professor has taught in well known music academies and master classes. In 2012 a French film company Inthemood, dedicates the documentary film “Chez elle: Ailleurs – Les voyages d’Emilia Baranowska” to her. Born in Sofia, Emilia Baranowska, began piano lessons at the age of 4 with her mother. At the age of 9, Emilia switched to the cello, and became a student of the great Bulgarian cellist Zdravko Yordanov, a disciple of Rostropovitch. Her encounter with the cellist Eleftherios Papastavro (disciple of Pablo Casals) and, the patrons of the arts, Ernst and Margrit Hermann at a master class in Yugoslavia changed the course of her life. They encouraged 18 years old Emilia to pursueher musical studies with Papastavro at the Ecole
Normale Superieure de Musique in Paris. Emilia's international career was launched as soon as she moved in Paris.In 1969 she first appeared at the “Donauseschinger Musiktage” festival in Germany. In 1975 Emilia won the Special Prize for the Best Interpretations of Spanish Music at the International Music Competition of Granada. In 1977 Deutsche Grammophon publish her recording with a Bulgarian bass Boris Christoff “Cello and Voice”. In 1979 she was invited to perform Bach’s Suite No 5 in a musical program of the French Television. Her performing drew the attention of Leonard Rose, who invited her to perfect her artistry at the Juilliard School in New York. Upon returning 1981 to Paris, a new stage of her life began as she met various composers who wrote and dedicated works to her. Gheorghe Zamfir composed Three Pieces for Cello and Pan Flute. He subsequently wrote a Concerto for Cello, Pan Flute and Symphonic Orchestra. The Argentinian composer Sergio Calligaris in 1991 dedicated his Suite op 28 for solo Cello to her. In 1993 Djansug Kakhidze invited Emilia to the brand new Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra for the first series of concerts together with Vadim Repin and Eliso Virsaladze. The following year Vahtang Kakhidze dedicated his new composition Moon Dances for Cello and Chamber Orchestra to Baranowska premiered in Paris. In 2003 started her fruitful collaboration with William Bolcom whose Suite No1 for Cello Emilia performed in New York Carnegie Hall concert, in 2008, along with Brahms and Shostakovich Sonatas. Baranowska appears as a soloist with numerous orchestras: Chamber Orchestra or Europe; Sudwestrundfunk Radio Orchestra; Sofia Philharmonic orchestra; Bulgarian Radio Orchestra; Sofia Solists; Plovdiv Symphonic Orchestra; China National Symphony Orchestra; Prague Philharmonic Orchestra; Tbilissi Symphony Orchestra; Orchestre de Chambre de Versailles; Les Solistes Francais; Bodensee Symphony Orchestra; French-German Youth Orchestra; performing concerti from Haydn, Schumann, Elgar, Lalo, Brahms etc. She has also performed in the USA, Mexico, Canada, Morocco, Israel, Lebanon and China. Parallel with her concert career, Emilia has also a rich activity as a pedagogue. As a cello professor she has taught at Conservatoires de Musique de la Rochelle; de Region de Lille; Gabrliel Faure de la Ville de Paris.
Born into a music-loving family, Gaëlle Solal discovered the classical guitar at the age of five and began studying at the Marseille Conservatoire the following year. At just sixteen she took up a place at the Paris Conservatoire. As a little girl she’d written in a notebook, «When I grow up, I want to be a dancer and musician» – so some dreams do indeed come true...
Three years later she graduated from the Conservatoire, taking away with her a «Premier Prix» (honours degree) and a renewed desire to keep learning. Fun-loving, ambitious and keen not to let any new challenge pass her by, she took part in international competitions while studying for her master’s degree at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne. In 1998, she became the first female French musician to win one of the world’s leading classical guitar competitions – the City of Alessandria Competition. As well as being awarded grants and bursaries by numerous foundations, she also won twelve prizes in other national and international competitions.
In the early 2000s, Solal moved to Andalusia and began a seven-year teaching career, obtaining professorships at the Conservatories of Córdoba and Seville. During this period she continued her own studies, attending masterclasses around the world. In 2006, after ten years as half of the Astor Duo, she resumed her solo performing career – soon after this she won second prize in the Guitar Foundation of America’s International Competition and went on to perform at prestigious venues in more than forty different countries, as recitalist, chambermusician and
orchestral soloist.In 2009, an impromptu trip to Brazil led to her career taking a new turn. Back in Europe, she gave up teaching to dedicate herself full-time to her boundless love for performing. A devotee of freedom rather than dogma, Gaëlle Solal is able to move seamlessly from serious, formal solo performances to comic duets with her Crazy Nails duo partner Boris Gaquere, from Bach to The Beatles, from contemporary music to the Baroque.
A committed and supportive professional, she campaigns for the presence and visibility of women in the guitar world via the Guitar’Elles association, of which she is the founder. She has lived in Brussels since 2011 and was recently appointed visiting lecturer at the Royal Conservatory of Ghent.
©Patrick Fouque