Alla Francesca

So many of the best, and most influential, ensembles devoted to performing early music maintain dual careers as performers, but also as educators and scholars. The group known as Alla Francesca (from France, or in the French style) is no exception. The group consists of three central members: Pierre Hamon, who directs and plays historical wind instruments; Brigitte Lesne, singer and harpist; and singer and fiddle player Emmanuel Bonnardot. All of them met earlier in their careers and worked closely with Dominique Vellard in the Ensemble Gilles Binchois; the parent group was and remains headquartered at the Center for Medieval Music at the University of Paris, and produces performances in close communication with musicologists. Likewise, Alla Francesca retains close ties to the Center for Medieval Music; all three of the core members teach there, and they craft musical programs with careful consideration for the research that they and other European professional musicologists bring to each repertory. The group tends to perform music directly from the historical notation of early manuscript sources and brings each repertory to life with spirit and innovation. Performances have encompassed repertories from the eleventh century Troubadour lyrics (on Richard Coeur-de-lion) to the musical flowering of the European fifteenth century; the group's strongest work tends to be performing musics of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.