Iris Zerdoud

Born in Toulouse in 1985, Iris Zerdoud began playing the clarinet at the age of eight at the Conservatory in Tours before continuing her studies in Paris. In February 2007, she joined Pascal Moraguès and Jean-François Verdier’s class at the Paris Conservatoire. She also studied for a term at the Royal College of Music in London and has taken part in numerous masterclasses throughout Europe, notably in France, Switzerland, Portugal and the Netherlands.
Iris Zerdoud performs chamber music alongside renowned soloists in France and abroad, including Jean-François Heisser, Jean-Frédéric Neuburger and Miguel da Silva. She regularly collaborates with orchestras such as the Orchestre de l’Opéra national de Paris, the Orchestre National de France, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Orchestre de Picardie and the Orchestre national d’Auvergne.

It was at the Paris Conservatoire that she met the future founders of Le Balcon, an ensemble she joined at its inaugural concert in 2008 and with whom she has worked increasingly. She has been in charge of the production of the majority of Le Balcon’s concerts and operas since 2013 and is now head of production. In 2018–9, Iris Zerdoud was involved in Le Balcon’s production of Donnerstag aus Licht, appearing as the basset-horn incarnation of Eva.

In 2019, in addition to reviving Donnerstag aus Licht at Southbank Centre in London and the Auditorium Bordeaux, she gave the premiere of L’Agneau mystique – INNUBA by Colombian composer Marco Suárez-Cifuentes at the Théâtre de l’Athénée in Paris. The work will be given in an operatic version in Colombia in September 2021. Iris Zerdoud was also a guest artist with the International Contemporary Ensemble at a February 2019 concert at the Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo in Bogotá that focussed on the work of US composer Pauline Oliveros.

She is currently preparing Stockhausen’s Freitag aus Licht with clarinettist Suzanne Stephens for a production scheduled for 2022.