Ensemble Gilles Binchois

As with so many of the best early music ensembles performing today, the performances of the Ensemble Gilles Binchois have been inextricably linked with profound musical scholarship and the leadership of a single powerful personality. For the Ensemble Gilles Binchois, this personality remains its founder and director, Dominique Vellard. While also presenting around 30 concerts a year, the group has continued a steady recording pace into the mid-2020s. Adding to its catalog of more than 40 recordings, it issued the album Timor Mortis in 2024. Vellard and some of his close colleagues founded the Ensemble Gilles Binchois in 1978, taking clear positions from the outset that it would perform from original notation and make every effort through its performances to foster a more profound understanding of the structure and function of its music. The ensemble changes its personnel depending upon the repertory: from a handful of male voices for plainchant or early polyphony to a few mixed singers for chansons to adding festive instruments for splashier works. One of the most distinctive features of the group’s performing style is its thoughtful consideration of, and experimentation with, the ways that indigenous oral traditions might have impacted a more “formal” singing style. Though the Ensemble Gilles Binchois began its career focusing on French music and has most frequently brought out earlier French repertory, the expansion of its personnel to include specialists from other countries has helped it branch out geographically. It regularly performs all over Europe and has toured throughout the Americas and Asia. The Ensemble Gilles Binchois has been rewarded with the support of a large number of French governmental institutions, including the enthusiastic support of the Musical Affairs Department of the French Ministry of Culture. It retains a relationship with the Center for Medieval Music in Paris, as many of the group’s performers have taught or studied there. In addition, the ensemble has profited from close collaboration with some of Europe’s leading musicologists: Marie-Noël Colette in Paris and Karen Smith and Wulf Arlt in Basel, Switzerland. The Ensemble Gilles Binchois has released more than 40 recordings across labels such as Virgin Classics, Ambroisie, and Evidence, where the majority of its releases have been issued since 2015. These include Messes de Barcelone et d'Apt (2019), Dufay: Le prince d'amours (2021), and Timor Mortis (2024). ~ Timothy Dickey & Keith Finke