Viola da gamba player and conductor Philippe Pierlot (not to be confused with the flutist of the same name, especially inasmuch as the gambist has also performed on flute recordings) is one of his country's leading specialists in historically informed performance. Best known as the leader of the Ricercar Consort, he is also a noted educator. Pierlot was born in Liège in 1958. He was already showing a strong interest in early music at age 12, taking up the lute, recorder, and guitar. His teacher on the viola da gamba was Wieland Kuijken, one of the modern pioneers of the historical performance movement in the Low Countries. In 1980, he founded the Ricercar Consort, emphasizing not only the performance but also the recording of little-known Baroque works in historically informed interpretations. The group recorded several albums of German Baroque choral and instrumental music and then toured in 1985 with a performance of Bach's A Musical Offering: in a sense, its namesake with its famous ricercar movement. He has also performed as a soloist, with a repertoire that extends beyond the Baroque into new compositions dedicated to him. In addition to the gamba, he performs on the rarely played baryton, a stringed instrument for which Haydn wrote some 150 works. Pierlot revived the opera Sémélé by Marin Marais, giving the work its first performance in three centuries; for this project and for other works, he has reconstructed scores, providing new music where necessary. He has also conducted choral works -- often using the one-voice-per-part approach -- and vocal music. With Ricercar as both director and gambist, Pierlot has released more than 40 recordings, including the Bach cantata program Consolatio in 2018. The group has recorded primarily for the Ricercar, Flora, and Mirare labels. An album of music by the gamba master Jean de Sainte-Colombe appeared on the latter in 2020 and was followed in 2021 by an album of Beethoven's Irish songs featuring soprano Maria Keohane. Pierlot and the Ricercar Consort released the album Buxtehude: Salvator Mundi in 2023; by that time, Pierlot's recording catalog comprised some 50 albums. Pierlot has taught at the Hochschule für Musik Trossingen in Germany, the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague, and the Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels. ~ James Manheim, Rovi

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Philippe Pierlot

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