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Damien Top (born 13 July 1973, in Rouen) is a French tenor, musicologist and conductor, and is artistic director of the International Albert Roussel Festival.
| This article needs editing for compliance with Wikipedia's Manual of Style.(February 2014) |
Damien Top (born 13 July 1973, in Rouen) is a French tenor, musicologist and conductor, and is artistic director of the International Albert Roussel Festival.
Damien Top is an exponent of contemporary French music as singer, conductor, composer and musicologist. Honoured by the French government in 2002 with the Prix Charles Oulmont for his outstanding contributions to French culture, he serves as artistic director for the Lotte Lehmann Foundation, which he represents throughout the world in recitals and recordings.
Graduate of the Conservatoire of Lille and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, Damien Top studied with Galina Vishnevskaya, Jean-Christophe Benoît and Jacques Pottier. He has appeared in opera, operetta, and sacred works, as well as performing the entire range of French mélodie. In 1993, he was engaged by the Opéra de Paris-Bastille to sing in a new production of Benvenuto Cellini by Berlioz under the direction of Myung-whun Chung. In 2002, Damien Top sang and conducted the cantata L'oiseau a vu tout cela by Sauguet at the Académie Française.
Many contemporary composers have created works for him, including Jacques Chailley, who has proclaimed, "...l'art de Damien Top est exemplaire," as well as Isabelle Aboulker, Françoise Choveaux, Suzanne Joly, Alain Feron, Anthony Girard, Wally Karveno, Philippe Malhaire, Max Pinchard, Jean-Christophe Rosaz; the American Dianne Goolkasian Rahbee, Joni Greene, Isaac Schankler, the Belgian Marcel Cominotto, the Swiss Jean-Luc Darbellay, the New Zealander Edwin Carr, the Dutch composer Harry Cox, the Romanian Horia Surianu and the Australians Houston Dunleavy, [1] Peter Tahourdin, [2] Robert Trumble and Felix Werder. Top has recorded Massenet song cycles (BNL), romances of de Coussemaker (R.C.P.), art songs of Émile Goué (SyPr) and melodies of Claude Guillon-Verne (1879–1956), nephew of Jules Verne (1828–1905) (Azur Classical). “Diapason magazine” lauded him for his “impeccable taste.”
He has given recitals at Flâneries Musicales de Reims for the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation, Musicales en Valois, Festival des Grands Crus de Bourgogne , Festival de la Mélodie Française of Toulouse , as well as performances in Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Spain, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Macedonia, Mexico, New Zealand, and the United States.
A student of Sergiu Celibidache, he has conducted the Orchestre du Festival Roussel, the Joseph Jongen Ensemble, the Czech Chamber Soloists, and the Prague Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, Mihail Jora Philharmonic Orchestra among others. In his programs, he focuses on the music of our time, rediscovering many neglected works of Albert Roussel, Vincent d'Indy, Claude Delvincourt, Jørgen Jersild, Hans Eklund, George Enescu, Claude Guillon-Verne, Jean-Louis Martinet, Pauli Sandagerdi, Bohuslav Martinů, Christophe Looten, [3] Otmar Macha, Touve Ratovondrahety, José Soler Casabon, Peter Tahourdin and Maurice Thiriet.
Son of the poet Andrée Brunin, Damien Top gives poetry recitals (Alliance Française of Sydney, University of Melbourne, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Wo International Center at Punahou School), exploring a wide range of song texts and introducing the audience to the poetry of our time (Anthologie de la poésie française, Poètes féminins contemporains, Centenaire Paul Verlaine (1844–1876), etc.).
His biography of Albert Roussel was published in 2000 by Séguier. He has also written full length studies on Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943), Émile Goué (1904–1946) and René de Castéra (1873–1955), for which he was awarded the Prix du Salon du Livre d’Hossegor. He is frequently invited to speak on radio and television (France Musique, France Culture, Hawaii Public Radio, Radio Suisse Romande; French TV station FR3, Nederlandse Programma Stichting TV); to present papers on French music at international conferences and to give masterclasses in French art song in Australia, at the University of Melbourne, Monash University, La Trobe University, the University of Performing Arts at Wollongong; in New Zealand at the Victoria University of Wellington; at the James Madison University in Virginia; and in Quebec, Canada, at the Université de Sherbrooke and the Université de Montréal. Top writes a monthly music column in Politique Magazine. Member of the Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique (SACEM), his compositions have been played in France, Belgium, Italy and in the United States. A member of the board of directors of the Lotte Lehmann Foundation, he is also scientific advisor of the Bibliotheca della Memoria (Barletta - Italia), director of the Centre International Albert-Roussel which he founded in 1992 and of the Albert-Roussel International Festival.
In France, music reflects a diverse array of styles. In the field of classical music, France has produced several prominent romantic composers, while folk and popular music have seen the rise of the chanson and cabaret style. The earliest known sound recording device in the world, the phonautograph, was patented in France by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville in 1857. France is also the 5th largest market by value in the world, and its music industry has produced many internationally renowned artists, especially in the nouvelle chanson and electronic music.
Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy was a French composer and teacher. His influence as a teacher, in particular, was considerable. He was a co-founder of the Schola Cantorum de Paris and also taught at the Paris Conservatoire. His students included Albéric Magnard, Albert Roussel, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, and Erik Satie, as well as Cole Porter.
Albert Charles Paul Marie Roussel was a French composer. He spent seven years as a midshipman, turned to music as an adult, and became one of the most prominent French composers of the interwar period. His early works were strongly influenced by the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel, while he later turned toward neoclassicism.
Châteauroux is the capital city of the French department of Indre, central France and the second-largest town in the province of Berry, after Bourges. Its residents are called Castelroussins in French.
Charles Edmond Henri de Coussemaker was a French musicologist and ethnologist focusing mainly on the cultural heritage of French Flanders. With Michiel de Swaen and Maria Petyt, he was one of the most eminent defenders of the Dutch language in France.
The Pasdeloup Orchestra is the oldest symphony orchestra in France.
Peter Richard Tahourdin was an English-born Australian composer. His compositions range from orchestral and chamber music to choral and educational music, as well as music for the opera and ballet. Without being his principal contribution, he was one of the pioneers in the field of electronic music.
Christophe Looten is a French composer. Born in Bergues, he was made Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in January 2000.
The Loewenguth Quartet was a string quartet music ensemble led by the French violinist Alfred Loewenguth. It was particularly famous for performances of classical repertoire such as Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn quartets, and was active from the 1930s to the 1970s.
Joseph Rodolphe Mathieu was a Canadian composer, pianist, writer on music, and music educator. The Canadian Encyclopedia states, "Considered too avant-garde for his time because of Debussy's influence on his music, Mathieu gained recognition too late to inspire the generation that followed." The pianist Léo-Pol Morin was one of the few important exponents of his work, notably including Mathieu's Chevauchée and Trois Préludes in his concert repertoire. Mathieu's song Un peu d'ombre (1913) was included in a number of recitals given by Marguerite Bériza and Sarah Fischer in Europe.
Léo-Pol Morin was a Canadian pianist, music critic, composer, and music educator. He composed under the name James Callihou, with his most well known works being Suite canadienne (1945) and Three Eskimos for piano. He also composed works based on Canadian and Inuit folklore/folk music and harmonized a number of French-Canadian folksongs. Victor Brault notably transcribed his Inuit folklore inspired Chants de sacrifice for choir and 2 pianos.
Albert Huybrechts was a Belgian composer.
Émile-Jean-Joseph Vuillermoz was a French critic in the areas of music, film, drama and literature. He was also a composer, but abandoned this for criticism.
Pierre Lénert is a French violist. An international concertist, he is first solo violist of the Orchestre de l'Opéra national de Paris.
Stéphane Degout is a contemporary French baritone. He grew up in Saint-Jean-de-Niost (Ain) and has been living in Lyon since 1995.
Bruno Belthoise is a French classical pianist and improviser.
Émile Goué was a French composer.
The Festival international Albert-Roussel, created in 1997 by the tenor Damien Top to combat cultural desertification in rural areas, takes place every year in the region Nord-Pas-de-Calais and in Belgium in September-October. The programming is mainly focused on 20th century French music and contemporary creation.
Yvonne Lephay-Belthoise was a French virtuoso violinist.
Diane Andersen is a Danish born, Belgian classical concert pianist born in Copenhagen to a French mother and a Danish father.
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