Apolline Jesupret, Maya Levy, Belgian National Orchestra, Musiques Nouvelle
Biographie Apolline Jesupret, Maya Levy, Belgian National Orchestra, Musiques Nouvelle
Maya Levy
Recognized for her "mysterious and captivating charisma" (American Record Guide) and "captivating imagination coupled with freshness" (The Strad), Maya Levy has won numerous prestigious awards – "Caecilia Prize (Musician of the Year) awarded by the Union de la Presse.
1st Prize in the "2020 Francophone Public Media Competition", the 'Silver Medal' at the Manhattan International Music Competition, the "Supernova 2017" award at the Klarafestival – and is the laureate of the Karol Szymanowski Competition in 2018 as well as the "International Karol Lipinski Violin Competition 2019' where she was awarded the Beethoven Prize for the best interpretation of the sonata. In 2021, Maya was invited to perform at the farewell concert of German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels.
She has collaborated with numerous renowned conductors and orchestras, including the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Opera I Filharmonia Podlaska, the Szczecin Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, Orquestra Simfonica Julia Carbonell, the Royal Chamber Orchestra of Wallonia, the Torun Symphony Orchestra, the Mitteldeutsche Kammerphilharmonie...
Numerous prestigious locations have hosted Maya Levy: Berlin's Konzerthaus concert hall, NOSPR in Poland, the Philharmonic of Szczecin, Eric Granados Municipal Auditorium in Spain, Studio 4 at Flagey in Brussels, Brussels' Palais des Beaux-Arts, Balthazar Diaz Municipal Theatre in Madeira, Martin Codax Auditorium in Spain, the Royal Theatre de la Monnaie, the Philharmonie de Liege, Moscow's Tchaikovsky Conservatory, and Tel Aviv's Recanati Hall. Maya is often a featured musician at festivals like Mozartianna in Gdansk (Poland), Piano Salon Christophori (Berlin), Palermo Classica (Italy), Madeira Music Festival (Portugal), Les Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad (Switzerland), Podium Jonge Musici, Jugend Musiziert (Germany), Festival des Lumières de Montmorillon (France), Les Sommets du Classique (Switzerland), 'La Ballade Musicale in Rixensart' festival, L’été Mosan Festival, the Klarafestival, Jardin Musical, and the Musiq’3 Festival (Belgium).
Apolline Jesupret
Appreciated for her ‘captivating and delightful’ music (PanM) and ‘a maturity of writing that disconcerts’ (Crescendo Magazine), Apolline Jesupret defines the energy of her music as a balance between expressiveness and interiority, between delicacy and exaltation, between rhythm and contemplation. Keeping consonance as a guideline, from which she sometimes departs, the artist seeks refinement in timbre and orchestral textures, both in writing for large ensembles and for chamber music.
Apolline Jesupret's musical journey began at the age of 7, when she discovered the piano thanks to her teacher Rosella Clini. Her curiosity about improvisation and composition fuelled her daily musical apprenticeship and became a vehicle for expressing her creativity. She then trained at the Conservatoire Royal de Mons with Rosella Clini for piano and Claude Ledoux for composition. In 2017, she specialised in piano and instrumental pedagogy at the Université de Montréal.
Today, Apolline Jesupret commissions compositions for festivals in Belgium and elsewhere in Europe, for ensembles and for soloists and chamber musicians. In 2019, she will perform Claude Ledoux's concerto ‘A Butterfly's Dream’ as a soloist, accompanied by the ensemble Musique Nouvelles. That same year, she won the first prize in the ‘Ça Balance Musique Contemporaine’ competition, and in 2021 the ‘André Souris Prize’, which will enable her to join the Forum de la Création Musicale. In 2023, she composed her first violin concerto, which was performed at the Botanique by Maya Levy and the Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles. Her first work for symphony orchestra was premiered by the Belgian National Orchestra at Bozar in February 2024. At the same time, she released ‘Lueurs’, her first solo album on the Cyprès label. Her second album, ‘Bleu Ardent’, will be released by Cyprès in March 2025.
Musiques Nouvelles
Founded in 1962 by Pierre Bartholomée and Henri Pousseur, and directed since 1997 by the composer and cellist Jean-Paul Dessy, the Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles brings together virtuoso and inventive musicians who are keen to invest music with a fertile presence of meaning today, whether they are interpreting the repertoire of past centuries or creating that of our time. Each season, they initiate around fifty concerts and transdisciplinary performances (video, dance, literature, electronic arts, installations, extensions of the sound body, conferences, etc.), including around twenty new works, several CDs and a periodical magazine.
Jean-Paul Dessy
(b.1963 in Huy, Belgium) is a composer, cellist, conductor and artistic director of the ensemble Musiques Nouvelles. What he calls “acting as a musician” links the sacred and the profane without confusing them, in an intimate journey in search of a common and shared listening experience. He has directed over 100 performances worldwide and almost 200 diverse works of contemporary music as the conductor of the Wallonia Chamber Orchestra or the ensemble Musiques Nouvelles. From Scelsi to Radulescu, Bartholomée to Kissine or Lutoslawski to Piazzolla, he continues to open new paths: Murcof, Vénus, An Pierlé, Pierre Rapsat, David Linx, DJ Olive, Scanner … An expanding and changing universe where, in his own words, the music is “untemporary” rather than contemporary, acknowledging multiple bonds beyond epochs and genres.
