Denis Raisin-Dadre

Veteran wind player Denis Raisin Dadre is the longtime director of the ensemble Doulce Mémoire. That group is known for Raisin Dadre's stage productions that re-create something of the setting in which Renaissance works were originally performed. Raisin Dadre is also a significant educator. With Doulce Mémoire, he has amassed a substantial recording catalog that includes the 2024 release Ronsard et la musique. Raisin Dadre (his name is sometimes spelled with a hyphen) was born July 25, 1956, in Vaux-sur-Mer in southwestern France. His father was a pastor. Raisin Dadre entered the Conservatoire de Lyon (CNSMD), earning a bachelor's degree in musicology there. Concurrently, however, he took recorder lessons with Gabriel Garrido in Geneva, Switzerland, and also traveled to Paris for lessons on the oboe and other reed instruments. After completing his musicology degree in Lyon, he earned certificat d'aptitude performance diplomas in early music, flute, and recorder. For some years, he worked as an orchestral flutist and performed in a flute trio called I Dilettanti. In 1990, Raisin Dadre founded the mixed vocal-and-instrumental ensemble Doulce Mémoire ("Sweet Memory"). He remained its director as of the mid-2020s. Doulce Mémoire released its debut album, Fricassées Lyonaises: Publications by Jacques Moderne, on the Astrée label in 1996. Both in performance and on recordings, the group explored specific music-historical junctures in depth, and in performance, Raisin Dadre mounted stage settings that suggested those in which the music would originally have been performed. These settings included a Renaissance cabaret, stagings of stories, and a royal Requiem service. Doulce Mémoire continued to record for Astrée and later Naïve through the 2000s decade. Since then, Raisin Dadre and Doulce Mémoire have recorded for various labels, including Zig Zag Territoires, Ricercar, and Alpha, issuing Ronsard et la musique with bari-tenor Marc Mauillon on the latter label in 2024. By that time, Raisin Dadre's recording catalog comprised more than 25 items. Raisin Dadre is a professor of early music at the Conservatoire de Tours (CRR). ~ James Manheim, Rovi