William Christie
Le Jardin des Voix
Robert Thicknesse at the Barbican [Times Online, 10 Mar 05]
HOW refreshing, you think, as Les Arts Florissants bounds on stage, to see an early-music combo whose contracts appear to contain no clauses forbidding visits to hairdresser, shoe-shop and dressing-table, no injunctions to wear nothing but sacking and zit cream. How delightful, how French. With William Christie’s band, as Emcee in Cabaret might say, “Even ze orgestra is beaudiful.”
Curious, then, to emerge a couple of hours later surfeited, not to say haggard, with the Frenchness of it all, like a prisoner forced to watch Jules et Jim rather more than he might wish. After this frenetic capering and winsomeness, all you long for is to see some chaste English performance, lowered eyes, bashful body-language and a level of feyness short of the plutonial.
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Les Arts Florissants, Barbican Hall, London
By Richard Fairman [Financial Times, 10 Mar 05]
William Christie leads a double life – as founder and conductor of the period instrument group Les Arts Florissants, and as a horticulturist. The garden of his house outside Paris is said to be his pride and joy. When he comes to London, it is as likely to be for the Chelsea Flower Show as to conduct a concert. But, having honed his skills with plants, Christie has taken to cultivating young singers and this week saw the first appearance in the UK of his spin-off educational project, “Le Jardin des Voix”.
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A Baroque Boot Camp for Singers With a Gift
By AMANDA HOLLOWAY [NY Times, 15 Mar 05]
CAEN, France – The conductor William Christie’s garden is a legend in the world of classical music. Those who are invited to visit his 16th-century chateau in the Vendée region of France come away rhapsodizing about the immaculate hedges, the velvet lawns, the charming bell tower and the rough stone dovecote. All is evidently in exquisite taste, not a blade out of place.
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