Viola de gamba
Salomé Gasselin is an artist on the rise. Winner of the “Instrumental Soloist Revelation” award at the 2024 Victoires de la Musique Classique, the young Frenchwoman is putting the viola da gamba in the spotlight. Her debut album, Récit (2020, Mirare) has been praised for “making the viol vibrate.” It was selected by Le Monde as one of the “Promises of the Year” in 2023. Her career has been marked by numerous awards: among others, she was unanimously awarded the grand prize at the 2020 Gianni Bergamo Music Award in Lugano, Switzerland, the second prize at the 2020 Bach-Abel competition in Germany.
Although she once believed that she would win her first victories playing rugby, Salomé quickly decided that the concert hall was her preferred arena. She studied first at the CNSMD of Lyon with Marianne Muller, then in Holland at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague with Philippe Pierlot, and finally in Austria, at the Mozarteum University of Salzburg with Vittorio Ghielmi. Alongside music, Salomé studied modern literature in Paris.
Salomé performs with many of the world’s leading ensembles – Pygmalion, Jupiter, Masques, Ratas del Viejo Mundo, le Poème Harmonique, and Capriccio Stravante – and has performed at Wigmore Hall, the Musikverein in Vienna, the Paris Philharmonie, the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing, the Berlin Philharmonie, and the ElbPhilharmonie Hamburg, among others.
As a soloist, she has performed most recently at “La Folle Journée” in Nantes at the Festival de La Roque-d’Anthéron, Thüringer Bachwochen, Bozar Brussels, Festival de Chambord, Accademia Musicale Chigiana, Musique Baroque en Avignon, Philharmonie de Paris, MC2 Grenoble. For her concerts, she is joined by Emmanuel Arakélian (organ), Violaine Cochard, Arnaud de Pasquale and Justin Taylor (harpsichord), Daniel Zapico (theorbo) and Kevin Seddiki (guitare and zarb). This year she is forming her own viol consort, in order to tackle some of her favorite repertoire.
Salomé created the viola da gamba class of the Pierre Barbizet Conservatory of Marseille in 2021. She plays a French bass viol made by Simon Bongars in 1653.
