Since 1979 Dominique Vellard has been the inspirational driving force behind the Ensemble Gilles Binchois – some three decades of research and performance that have led to the creation of some of the essential recordings in the catalogue, especially of music from the medieval and early Renaissance periods. An outstanding series of recordings devoted to the music of Machaut, the École de Notre-Dame, the Burgundian School and early polyphony on labels such as Virgin Classics, Harmonic Records, Ambroisie and Deutsche Harmonia Mundi have been met by public, critical and musicological acclaim. The Ensemble Gilles Binchois performs regularly across Europe, from Estonia to Spain and from Scotland to the Ukraine as well as in Morocco, India, Malaysia and the United States.

Dominique Vellard’s passion for music from plainchant to the 17th century was nurtured as a choral singer at the Maîtrise de Notre-Dame in Versailles. In more recent years, Vellard has expanded his interests into other repertories – Southern and Northern India, as well as Spanish and Breton traditions – and he also has quite a passion for the composers such as Monteverdi and the lesser-known Guillaume Nivers (a contemporary of Charpentier). In all such vocal explorations he leads the way with his own distinctive tenor voice. However, for his first collaboration with Glossa – and for the label’s own desire to create new artistic visions – an additional facet of Dominique Vellard’s musical character is on display. In Vox nostra resonet Vellard has presented himself as the composer of five vocal works scored for a small number of voices from the Ensemble Gilles Binchois, for which he turned to profound religious texts (the Stabat mater, the Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross), drawing deeply on his own spiritual learnings as much as his experience and interests in monodies and polyphonies from both the Western and the Eastern traditions.

Other representations of Dominique Vellard’s musical explorations include the Ensemble Vox Suavis (formed with Ana-Isabel Arnaz), dedicated principally to traditional Spanish repertoires, and the trio Neuma (with Marcus Weiss, saxophones and Raitis Grigalis, baritone), which explores the meeting points between early chant and the avant-garde. Vellard has been teaching at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis since 1982 and directs both the Rencontres Internationales de Musique Médiévale at Thoronet and the Les Meslanges de Printemps Festival in Dijon. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.