Hélène Houzel develops a violinist's career at the crossroads of performance, research, and transmission. Her work is grounded with particular affinity in historical practices, notably around the Baroque violin, while maintaining an active presence as performer and pedagogue. She teaches notably at the CRR of Aubervilliers–La Courneuve, and her activity also extends through stage projects, chamber music, and the rediscovery of repertoires.

The disc Telemann – 12 Fantaisies fully illuminates this artistic identity. Devoted to one of the summits of the solo violin repertoire, it places Hélène Houzel before a writing that demands at once freedom, architecture, and richness of colour. This choice of programme affirms an artist capable of holding the thread of discourse alone, in a repertoire where virtuosity only has meaning in service of line, relief, and invention.

Beyond this solo repertoire, her career reveals a musician particularly engaged with the links between music, theatre, and instrumental heritage. This openness gives her profile a precious singularity: that of a performer who does not merely execute works, but seeks to rediscover their contexts, gestures, and living presence.

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Cindy Castillo has established herself as a singular personality on the organ scene, through programmes that renew the listening of the instrument and explore its dialogues with other artistic languages, from electronics to poetry and image. Trained in several major institutions in Belgium, France, and Switzerland, a laureate of numerous foundations and of the Concours Axion Classics, she has also been artist-in-residence at the Sapporo Concert Hall in Japan.

Her career combines performing activity, pedagogical commitment, and artistic responsibility. She teaches organ at the IMEP of Namur within OrgueStudio and has since 2023 been responsible for the conservation and artistic direction of the Thomas organs at the church of Saint-Loup de Namur. Her discographic work reflects this same curiosity, between historical repertoire, contemporary creation, and long-term partnerships with artists from other horizons.

The discs available with Paraty illuminate precisely this richness of career. One finds Cindy Castillo in chamber music and creation projects, notably alongside Aurélie Franck for Fragments, as well as with Frédéric d'Ursel and Jean-Pierre Deleuze in Träume und Erwachen. This discographic presence draws the portrait of a performer who is at once rigorous, inventive, and deeply committed to making the organ an instrument of encounter.

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Edoardo Torbianelli and Fernando Caida-Greco form a duo deeply rooted in the sonic world of the 19th century, with rare attention given to the instruments, styles, and gestures of interpretation specific to Romanticism. A pianofortist among the most recognised in the field of historical keyboards, Edoardo Torbianelli pursues a dual career as performer and pedagogue, notably in Basel and Berne. Alongside him, cellist Fernando Caida-Greco, born in Buenos Aires and now active in Italy, develops a career nourished by chamber music, teaching, and research on the cello.

Their collaboration finds in the disc Le Chant du violoncelle a particularly coherent terrain of expression. The programme showcases an aesthetic of line, timbre, and phrasing, placing the Romantic cello at the centre of a subtle dialogue with the pianoforte. This work is inscribed in an approach that consists not merely in replaying a repertoire, but in rediscovering its sonic balances, its breathing, and its inner vocality.

This duo brings together two artists whose careers converge around a shared rigour: making Romantic music heard with historical depth, expressive freedom, and refinement of colour. Their discographic presence with Paraty foregrounds a partnership founded on listening, stylistic precision, and a very embodied conception of sound.

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The Collectif Trytone was founded in 2016 around pianist and composer Lucie de Saint Vincent, with the ambition of bringing musical languages into dialogue rather than compartmentalising them. At the crossroads of Baroque, classical, and jazz, the ensemble explores a genuine musical synthesis, founded on improvisation, the circulation of styles, and a desire to open new bridges between musicians and audiences.

This identity is particularly embodied in Back to Bach, the collective's debut album, which takes the music of Johann Sebastian Bach as a source of inspiration and as a terrain of reinvention. The project affirms a very free way of inhabiting musical heritage, not as a fixed repertoire, but as a living material, traversed by today's practices and by strong stage energy.

Over the course of its evolution, Trytone also developed variable formats, from quintet to trio, while remaining faithful to the same artistic vision. Around Lucie de Saint Vincent, one finds depending on the project artists such as Lucie Chartin, Leïla Soldevila, Gülay Hacer Toruk, João Driessen, Mihail Ivanov, and Joan Terol Amigó, all united by the same desire for exploration, exchange, and stylistic freedom.

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Benoît Babel has established himself as a harpsichordist deeply committed to the world of early music, with a career built between Bordeaux, Rueil-Malmaison, and Paris, under the guidance of such figures as Laurent Stewart and Noëlle Spieth. His training very early led him towards continuo, chamber music, and ensemble work, before he in turn developed a career as a pedagogue, notably at the Conservatoire de Versailles, where he teaches harpsichord and basso continuo.

His discographic work highlights a musical personality that is at once precise, curious, and strongly asserted in terms of style. In his recording devoted to Louis and François Couperin, he approaches two major worlds of the French harpsichord by bringing out clearly differentiated styles, yet connected by the same intelligence of phrasing and colour. This project underlines a performer attentive to characters, balances, and the singularity of each style of writing.

Alongside his solo career, Benoît Babel directs the Ensemble Zaïs, founded in 2011, with which he explores the Baroque repertoire on period instruments. The disc Rameau & Handel: Dom Bedos illustrates this other facet of his career, in an ambitious project around Handel's organ concertos and a work of rewriting from Rameau's Pièces de clavecin en concerts, with the participation of organist Paul Goussot. This dual activity as harpsichordist and musical director draws the portrait of an artist committed as much to sonic research as to the vitality of collective gesture.

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Eudes Bernstein has established himself as one of the most notable figures of his generation at the saxophone. Trained at the CNSM of Paris under Claude Delangle, after a period at the Hochschule in Cologne and musicological studies at the Sorbonne, he distinguished himself in several major international competitions, notably in Osaka, Dinant, and Aeolus. His career has taken him to perform as a soloist with several European orchestras, while benefiting from the support of the Banque Populaire Foundation.

His profile is also distinguished by a strong openness towards new creation and less expected musical forms. Deeply invested in contemporary music, he has premièred or championed works by Karol Beffa, Thierry Escaich, Bruno Mantovani, Philippe Hurel, Matteo Franceschini, Jonathan Pontier, Naoki Sakata, Philippe Leroux, and Orlando Bass. He is also the founder of the Trio Dämmerung, an atypical ensemble that reinvents major pages of the orchestral repertoire through the piano trio format.

The disc Spirales, available with Paraty, fully illuminates this artistic identity. It reveals a musician fascinated by sound, the transformation of musical material, and the multiple faces of the saxophone. This project draws the portrait of a performer who is at once virtuosic, curious, and deeply committed to a poetic, contemporary, and very personal vision of his instrument.

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Fuoco E Cenere, founded in 2002 and directed by gambist Jay Bernfeld, has established itself in the early music landscape through a particularly free and audacious artistic vision. The ensemble explores more than a thousand years of repertoire, from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, and distinguishes itself through programmes conceived as genuine musical adventures, often at the crossroads of instrumental, vocal, and scenic forms. Based in Paris, it has from its beginnings developed a pronounced taste for unexpected juxtapositions, rare scores, and unconventional concert settings.

Driven by its director's love of the voice, Fuoco E Cenere regularly collaborates with leading singers and instrumentalists, in variable forces ranging from small ensemble to larger formations. This flexibility is part of its deep identity: each project seems conceived as a theatre of exploration, where historical research nourishes a direct, vibrant, and willingly contrasting expression.

The recordings available with Paraty reflect this richness of journey. One finds Jay Bernfeld in projects such as Folies d'Espagne around Marin Marais and Jacques Morel, pièces de viole (1709), which showcase the French viola da gamba in all its refinement. This discographic presence draws the portrait of an ensemble faithful to high stylistic rigour, yet always driven by a taste for relief, narrative, and rediscovery.

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The Ensemble Turicum, founded in 1992 by Brazilian singer Luiz Alves da Silva and Swiss violinist Mathias Weibel, devoted itself from the outset to the historically informed performance of Iberian and South American music. Based in Zurich, the ensemble forged a distinctive identity around the repertoires of the 18th and early 19th century, with particular attention given to Brazil, Portugal, and the musical exchanges between Europe and Latin America.

Its artistic approach rests as much on research as on rediscovery. The ensemble has brought to light numerous rare or forgotten pages, working notably on composers such as José Maurício Nunes Garcia, Manuel de Oliveira, Marcos Portugal, and Antonio dos Santos Cunha. This vision gives its programmes a very recognisable colour, where stylistic rigour meets a pronounced taste for underexplored musical heritages and for the great sacred frescoes of the Lusophone world.

The recordings available with Paraty fully reflect this identity. Matinas do Natal highlights the richness of the sacred repertoire of Marcos Portugal, while the ensemble's discography more broadly reveals a long-term body of work on Portuguese and Brazilian religious music. Through these projects, Turicum affirms a rare artistic personality, at once learned, adventurous, and deeply inhabited by the rediscovery of Ibero-American heritages.

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Octetology established itself very quickly as one of the most notable ensembles of the new tango scene. Founded in 2020, the group won first prize at the international competition of Castelfidardo in the 'Piazzolla Awards' category and has been invited to landmark venues and events such as the Théâtre du Châtelet, the Studio 104 of Radio France, the Nuits de Nacres, the Nuits musicales d'Uzès, and Générations France Musique Live.

Dedicated to the flamboyant legacy of Astor Piazzolla's Octeto Buenos Aires, the ensemble distinguishes itself through rare research and rewriting work. Since the scores of this repertoire had disappeared, Octetology succeeded in reconstituting the original arrangements, restoring to life a major chapter in the history of Tango Nuevo. This approach gives its project an identity that is at once heritage-oriented, virtuosic, and resolutely contemporary.

The disc Neotango fully reflects this ambition. It brings together Emilie Aridon-Kociołek, Adrien Merahi, Carmela Delgado, Lysandre Donoso, Aurelie Gallois, Mathias Naon, Gersende Perini, and Lucas Eubel Frontini around a shared impulse: to recapture the energy of a mythical ensemble while giving it a new intensity, nourished by jazz, classical music, and a strong stage culture.

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The Duo Gagey-Bleton was born of an encounter first in adolescence, then rediscovered some years later with a musical naturalness that led them quite naturally to the stage. Around the voice of mezzo-soprano Éléonore Gagey and the guitar of Guillaume Bleton, the duo developed programmes of Italian, Neapolitan, and French music before focusing on a first major project devoted to Spanish mélodies. From this work was born Romancero, the duo's debut album, extended by a staged concert form built around the romance, oral transmission, and memory.

Éléonore Gagey brings to this venture an already solidly established lyric career. Trained in Lausanne, she has performed in roles such as Cherubin, Carmen, Rosine, and Donna Elvira, and was also heard in Sartorio's L'Orfeo under the direction of Philippe Jaroussky. A laureate of the International Competition of Marmande and the Royaumont Foundation, she cultivates in parallel a marked taste for recital and chamber music, which finds in this duo a particularly natural terrain of expression.

Opposite her, Guillaume Bleton deploys the profile of a guitarist, composer, and arranger nourished by multiple influences, from rock and jazz to contemporary writing. Trained in Parisian conservatoires, holding degrees from the Pôle Supérieur de Lille and then the CNSMD de Paris for pedagogy, he pursues a very open chamber music career while teaching at the CRR of Créteil. In Duo Gagey-Bleton, his work on arrangement and timbre plays a central role, giving the Spanish repertoire a colour that is at once intimate, expressive, and deeply embodied.

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The Ensemble Les Meslanges, founded by Thomas Van Essen and today co-directed with Volny Hostiou, brings together solo singers and instrumentalists around a shared taste for the diversity of early music. Based in Normandy, the ensemble has built a strong identity by placing works in their historical, literary, and spiritual context, and by imagining concert formats that bring music, texts, and the living word into dialogue. This approach has enabled it to perform in numerous festivals and leading venues in France and abroad.

This artistic vision finds a particularly striking fulfilment in the work undertaken around the Messes retrouvées by Jehan Titelouze. By bringing to light these rediscovered pages of early French Baroque, Les Meslanges affirmed a genuine profile of pioneers, combining musicological rigour, a sense of vocal and instrumental colours, and the strong intensity of the word. The two volumes released have been widely praised by critics, confirming the ensemble's distinctive place in the exploration of French repertoires of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Around Thomas Van Essen, Volny Hostiou, and collaborators such as François Ménissier, the ensemble thus develops a world in which stylistic precision is never separated from dramatic breath. Its discographic journey with Paraty presents a vibrant vision of early music, nourished by research, collective work, and a constant desire to make works at once more legible, more embodied, and closer to the audience.

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A violinist trained at the CNSM of Paris and the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, Pauline Klaus also completed her studies with a master's degree in philosophy at the Sorbonne. This dual intellectual and musical rigour is reflected in a career in which virtuosity is accompanied by genuine reflection on works, their construction, and their significance.

A deeply committed chamber musician, she has for some ten years pursued long-term work with the Quatuor Lontano, an ensemble with which she explores both the great repertoire and less frequently performed scores, while maintaining a constant dialogue with contemporary creation. Her career has taken her to collaborate with leading artists and ensembles in France and abroad, and to champion a repertoire ranging from chamber music to the most current forms of writing.

This artistic freedom today finds a natural continuation in her album Obsessions, released by Paraty — a very personal project built around a solo violin of strong narrative intensity. Alongside her performing career, Pauline Klaus has directed the Les Musicales d'Assy festival since 2015 and teaches at the Conservatoire du 16e arrondissement de Paris Francis Poulenc, affirming a musical personality that is at once performer, transmitter, and artistic director.

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A mezzo-soprano from Réunion, Alice Ferrière first received musical training at the conservatoire of her island before pursuing academic studies at the Sorbonne in contemporary history and literature, and then devoting herself fully to lyric singing. She then deepened her training at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, where she obtained a master's degree in opera with the jury's commendations in 2012.

Her career very early combined the stage, recital, and exploration of lied and mélodie. She distinguished herself in several international competitions, pursued demanding work on the French and Germanic repertoire, and developed a performing career between France, Austria, and Réunion. This trajectory is also enriched by solid stage experience, from Handel to Mozart, as well as a strong commitment to the diffusion of classical and lyric music on her home island, notably through artistic and pedagogical projects.

This musical personality finds a natural continuation in her recital programmes and discography, marked by a pronounced taste for poetic worlds, inner narrative, and bridges between repertoires. Her album Nuit exquise, released by Paraty with pianist Sascha El Mouissi, fully embodies this artistic vision, as do her more recent projects, including Clara, notre Étoile, which confirm a performer who is at once cultivated, expressive, and deeply invested in both text and vocal colour.

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Founded by harpsichordist and conductor Fabien Armengaud, the Ensemble Sébastien de Brossard was born of work on the rediscovery of the French Baroque repertoire, conducted with a constant concern for research, exhumation of sources, and historically informed interpretation. The ensemble's name pays homage to Sébastien de Brossard, a learned figure, intermediary, and collector, whose spirit of curiosity seems to guide the artistic project from its very inception.

While maintaining a marked predilection for French Baroque music, the ensemble broadens its horizon to Baroque Europe and brings together singers and instrumentalists of the very highest calibre. Its work is distinguished by an approach that is at once learned and vibrant, bringing musicological research, stylistic rigour, and intensity of musical gesture into dialogue.

With Paraty, the ensemble is notably represented by the album Motets à trois voix d'hommes et symphonies, devoted to Louis-Nicolas Clérambault, with Jean-François Novelli, Alain Buet, and Cyril Auvity. This first discographic landmark has strongly contributed to establishing the ensemble's identity in the French Baroque landscape.

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A French pianist with a deeply singular career, Nicolas Stavy has built his path at the crossroads of a great pianistic tradition and a pronounced taste for the less expected paths of the repertoire. Trained notably under Dominique Merlet, then marked by the teachings of György Sebök and Alfred Brendel, he established himself very early on the international scene through distinctions in major competitions, including Geneva and the Chopin Competition in Warsaw.

His career is distinguished by a rare freedom of thought: to the great Romantic repertoire, which he defends with strong personal intensity, he associates a constant curiosity for rarer works, programmes constructed with true vision, and a regular commitment to chamber music and projects crossing literature and the stage. This artistic personality is also reflected in the reception of his recordings, regularly praised by the press for their depth, singularity, and interpretative commitment.

With Paraty, Nicolas Stavy is present with Frédéric Chopin – En concert, a disc that contributed to establishing his name in the French pianistic discography. He has since pursued a particularly acclaimed discographic career, while affirming the identity of a demanding musician — at once heir to a tradition and interpreter of conviction, carried by a very personal vision of the piano.

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Brought together by a shared stylistic rigour and a marked taste for early repertoires, violinist Stéphanie Paulet and organist-harpsichordist Élisabeth Geiger form a duo in which historical research continuously nourishes the musical gesture. Stéphanie Paulet, distinguished as Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, has established herself in the French Baroque landscape following a career marked by three First Prizes from the CNSM of Paris, activity as lead violin in major ensembles on period instruments, and the founding of her own ensemble, Aliquando.

Élisabeth Geiger, for her part, has developed a career centred on harpsichord, organ, and basso continuo, nourished by training in Strasbourg and by collaborations with major figures of the French Baroque revival. Their encounter gives rise to projects in which intelligence of sources, knowledge of instruments, and freedom of phrasing come together in a deeply embodied reading of works.

With Paraty, their album Intuitions consecrates this artistic affinity through a programme around Johann Sebastian Bach, approached as a terrain of sonic reinvention and intimate dialogue between violin and organ. Their collaboration is part of an already long-standing partnership, also visible in Minoritenkonvent, and affirms a particularly distinctive duo in the landscape of early music.

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A Franco-Hungarian pianist born in Timişoara, Suzana Bartal established herself through a career that is both precocious and remarkably well-constructed. A competition laureate from childhood, she gave her first solo recital at 12 and performed with orchestra at 13, before pursuing her training in France under Denis Pascal, Pierre Pontier, and Florent Boffard, and then in the United States at Yale, where she obtained a doctorate in performance.

Her career reflects a demanding musical personality, nourished by a solid culture of the great repertoire, but also by a constant curiosity for rarer works and projects with a strong identity. Recognised in several international competitions, notably in New York, and supported by the Yamaha Music Foundation of Europe, the Nadia and Lili Boulanger Foundation, the ADAMI, and the Williamson Foundation, she today pursues an international career that combines recital, concerto, chamber music, and recordings acclaimed for their depth and intensity.

With Paraty, Suzana Bartal is associated with a recording devoted to Schumann, an important milestone in a discographic career that has since broadly affirmed itself. Her artistic presence inscribes itself in a line of piano playing that is at once considered, inhabited, and free, carried by a true sense of musical architecture and colour.

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Mora Vocis is an ensemble of female solo voices devoted to repertoires in which memory, vocality, and space hold a central place. The ensemble first established itself through its deep connection with medieval music, approached not as a fixed heritage but as a living material, carried by breath, diction, and stage presence. Since 2011, its artistic direction has been held by Els Janssens-Vanmunster.

Over the course of its career, Mora Vocis developed a very singular identity at the crossroads of concert, theatrical gesture, and sonic exploration. The ensemble champions as much the sacred songs of the Middle Ages as today's new works, constructing forms where female voices dialogue with poetry, orality, and sometimes other artistic disciplines. This fidelity to a demanding artistic vision explains the distinctive place it occupies in the French vocal landscape.

With Paraty, Mora Vocis is notably present with L'Amante, balade vocale dans un jardin de cantiques and Il pleut des voix de femmes, an album devoted to Sophie Lacaze. The latter also features several artists associated with the project, including Els Janssens-Vanmunster, Michel Supéra, Alain Carré, and Marie Vermeulin, powerfully extending the ensemble's identity: extreme attention to text, vocal colour, and sonic dramaturgy.

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