Ensemble Jupiter

Created in 2018 by lutenist Thomas Dunford, Ensemble Jupiter was born from the meetings and friendships he has formed with brilliant musicians of his generation: among them Lea Desandre, Jean Rondeau, Douglas Balliett, Bruno Philippe, Sophie Gent, Thibaut Garcia and Peter Whelan. The great freedom, listening skills and improvisation acquired by each of them over the years allow them to perform a wide-ranging repertoire; from Vivaldi, Handel, Destouches, Couperin and Francesco Mancini through to Joaquín Rodrigo and original compositions by Thomas Dunford and Douglas Balliett.

Performances in the 2023/24 season have taken the Ensemble Jupiter to the Opéra Comique, the Maison de la Radio et de la Musique in Paris, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Opéra de Rouen, the Cité Bleue in Geneva and to the Festival La Folia in Rougemont, and in summer 2024 to the Gstaad Festival, the Salzburg Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and the Musikfest Bremen. In collaboration with the director Sophie Daneman and the costume designer Hubert Barrère they have devised a new programme with the title Chasing Rainbows.

Ensemble Jupiter‘s first disc, released in autumn 2019 for the Alpha label, is dedicated to Vivaldi. Alternating extracts from operas and instrumental concertos, it highlights the different soloists of the ensemble. The success of the project has been documented in numerous awards, among them the Caecilia Prize awarded by the Union of the Belgian Music Press and, in 2020, an International Classical Music Award (ICMA).

In 2021 they released Lea Desandre’s first recital disc Amazone, featuring arias from French and Italian operas of the 17th and 18th centuries, and in 2022 they released Eternal Heaven with Lea Desandre and Iestyn Davies, a disc dedicated to Handel’s English oratorios.

Jupiter is supported by Fondation Orange, Cartier, Centre National de la Musique (CNM), SPEDIDAM and ADAMI. Jupiter is in residence at the Fondation Singer Polignac (Paris).