Since its creation in 1997 in Toulouse, Les éléments chamber choir has been involved in an ongoing and challenging musical project, performing contemporary creations based on ancient works, driven by its founder, Joël Suhubiette.
This approach of performing ancient music has been enriched through musicological research over the past few decades, the performance of the great choral repertoire of the twentieth century, the requests made each year to today’s composers, even the diversity of artistic forms taken on by the choir—the a cappella repertoire, the “vocal concerto” with an ensemble of soloists and instruments, the oratorio or the opera—it is the exploration of such varied themes that gives Les éléments its “own identity” among the French choral scene.
Voted Ensemble of the year at the ‘Victoires de la Musique classique’ in 2006, the chamber choir is regularly hailed by critics for its ability to master a variety of repertoires, conducted with precision and conviction by Joël Suhubiette, always mindful of “combining loyalty to the original work with emotion”.
Emmanuel Krivine, Jérémie Rhorer, Louis Langrée and Josep Pons are among the renowned conductors who enjoy collaborating with the ensemble, recognizing its “versatility and accessibility” as well as the “beauty of sound, purity and transparency”.
L’Opéra Comique and the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées also enlist the choir’s services for stage productions.
Each season, Les Éléments perform in Paris and on the most prominent French stages, at festivals, on international tours and, of course, in Toulouse and the Occitanie region where it is has been the choir-in-residence for Odyssud-Blagnac since 2001 and at the Abbey School in Sorèze since 2006. Under the direction of Joël Suhubiette or when invited to record with other conductors, Les éléments record ancient polyphony in a cappella, the great baroque and classical oratorios and the great works of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries for record labels such as L’empreinte digitale, Hortus, Virgin Classics, Ligia Digital and Naïve.”
