ÍøÆغÚÁÏ

French harpsichordist Olivier Baumont has distinguished himself as a performer and scholar, specializing in French Baroque repertoire. He took up the harpsichord without learning piano first, sharing his family's love for French history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He studied with Kenneth Gilbert and Huguette Dreyfus and worked with Gustav Leonhardt in his master classes in Cologne. He was awarded first prize in harpsichord (1981) and in chamber music (1982) at the Paris Conservatory and won the Concours de Solistes de Radio France in 1982. He frequently performs at music festivals in Europe, England, and the United States, and has toured widely. Since 1992, he has directed the Festival Couperin at Chaumes-en-Brie. He has released over 40 recordings, including a complete edition of Rameau's harpsichord works for Accord-Universal and complete editions of harpsichord works by Couperin and Louis-Claude Daquin for Erato-Warner Classic. Other recordings include works by Handel, Purcell, Johann Sebastian Bach, eighteenth century Russian composers, and eighteenth century American composers. His disc of the harpsichord works by Jean-François Dandrieu was awarded the Choc du Monde de la Musique. His twentieth century repertoire for the harpsichord includes works by Manuel de Falla, Milhaud, and Poulenc. In September, 2001, Baumont became professor of harpsichord at the Paris Conservatory. He is the author of a biography of François Couperin, has edited harpsichord works by Michel Corrette and Jacques Duphly, and has contributed scholarly articles to numerous musicological journals.

Violinist and conductor Julien Chauvin specializes in historically oriented performance and has founded several ensembles of his own. Following 18th century practice, he often conducts while playing the violin.

Chauvin was born on March 11, 1979, in Fontainebleau, outside Paris. Even before adulthood, he was attracted by Baroque music and by historical instruments. He traveled to the Netherlands for violin studies at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague with Vera Beths, and a competition win at the Musica Antiqua Bruges festival in 2003 launched his career. Chauvin put in several years of apprenticeship in various European Baroque ensembles while also performing as a soloist as far afield as Central Asia and South America. He and Jérémie Rhorer formed the group Le Cercle de l'Harmonie in 2005, and the pair co-directed the group for ten years. In 2015, Chauvin formed Le Concert de la Loge, basing the group directly on 18th century models and often conducting from the violin. He has also collaborated with the Cambini-Paris Quartet since 2007, exploring little-known 18th century repertory with that group. Chauvin has served with the Folger Consort in Washington D.C., Les Violons du Roy, and the Kammerorchester Basel, among other groups, as a guest conductor, and he has been the music director for dramatic productions, including a production of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail which he led from the violin.

Chauvin made his recording debut in 2007, appearing with Le Cercle de l'Harmonie as it backed soprano Diana Damrau on her album Arie di Bravura. He was a featured soloist -- with Rhorer -- on the 2012 album Le Paris des Romantiques on the Naïve label. Chauvin recorded several albums for Aparte and then returned to Naïve in 2020 as head of and soloist with Le Cercle de l'Harmonie on the album Vivaldi: Concerti per violino VIII "Il teatro." Chauvin remained active during the COVID-19 pandemic, issuing six albums in 2022 alone; one of those, Rivales, featured sopranos Véronique Gens and Sandrine Piau, with Chauvin conducting Le Concert de la Loge. He returned in 2023 with several albums, including Philippe Jaroussky's Forgotten Arias. By the time he released a new recording of Vivaldi's Four Seasons violin concertos on Alpha in 2024, his recording catalog numbered some 35 items. ~ James Manheim