Près de votre oreille (Near your ear), is a living space of discovery, performances and musics, which brings together recognized artists and soloists around new repertoires.

 

Through its strangeness and poetry, the name of the ensemble Près de votre oreille has naturally become the singular identity of a young instrumental and vocal ensemble, initiating atypical projects. Since 2017, Robin Pharo has thus satisfied his intense desire for creation and musical and human encounters that forged his artistic personality. The ensemble presents many unusual gems, which constantly arouse curiosity, and affirms its willingness to defend both the repertoires of the past, notably from the Renaissance to the end of the Baroque era, as well as contemporary creation. By carrying out numerous experimental projects on our relationship to the concert, it places at the heart of its development a broad reflection on classical music, between performances, recitals, meetings, sharing, voices and instruments.

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In 2020, the ensemble received support from the Caisse des Dépôts' Mécénat Musical program for the first time. It created its Blessed Echoes program (a co-production with the Cité de la Voix de Vézelay and the Centre Culturel de l'Entente Cordiale du Château d'Hardelot). Since its creation, it has been behind several English productions: Come Sorrow, A Byrd Celebration, a tribute to William Byrd commemorating the 400th anniversary of his death (creative residency at the Embaroquement Immédiat festival, in partnership with the Baroque de Pontoise festival and the Château du Clos Lucé International Renaissance Music Festival), Lachrimae or Seven Tears, Both Alike, and The Last Dawn of Consort.

The Près de votre oreille ensemble has been based in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, in the Limousin region, since 2023, as part of several collaborations with the Ferme de Villefavard in Limousin, such as the creation of its program Mes amours durent en tout temps, dedicated to Franco-Flemish Renaissance song (a project supported by the DRAC Nouvelle Aquitaine), and the organization in 2025 of the first edition of its traveling festival L’éveil de l’automne (The Awakening of Autumn). Associated with the DRAC En résonance program, which brings together the Théâtre du Cloître in Bellac, the Mégisserie de Saint-Junien, and the Ferme de Villefavard, this festival participates in a broad reflection on cultural and territorial policies. L’éveil de l’automne is also a laboratory for the dissemination of classical music and live performance. It seeks to create new spaces for expression and transform everyday places into theaters for artistic encounters with the help of a cultural action program called Près de chez vous (Close to home), which is being developed within the festival and throughout the Limousin region. In response to the call for projects C’est mon patrimoine (It's my heritage) from the DRAC Nouvelle-Aquitaine, it created a show with children entitled Sur les sentiers de l’automne (On the paths of autumn), following a week of work and numerous workshops on vocal practice.

The association Près de votre oreille has produced six recordings: L’Anonyme Parisien (Paraty, 2016), Come Sorrow (Paraty, 2019), Suite d'un goût étranger (Château de Versailles Spectacles label, 2021), Blessed Echoes (Paraty, 2023), The Waves (Scala Music, 2023) in duo with mezzo-soprano Anaïs Bertrand and dedicated to contemporary works by Philippe Hersant, Fabien Touchard, and Robin Pharo, as well as arrangements of melodies by Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, Nadia Boulanger, Lou Koster, and Lighten mine eies (harmonia mundi, 2025).  He has performed throughout France, at the Embaroquemment Immédiat festival, the Théâtre Élisabéthain and the Midsummer Festival at the Château d'Hardelot, the Festival de Saintes, the Musicales de Normandie, the Opéra de Lille, the Théâtre du Musée Grévin (Philippe Maillard Production), the Athénée Théâtre Louis-Jouvet, La Scala Paris, the Périgord Noir Festival, the Château de Lunéville, the Rencontres Musicales de Vézelay, the Sablé Festival, the Ambronay Festival and the Tarentaise Baroque Festival in Europe, at the Warsaw Philharmonic in Poland, the Max Festival, the Musiq3 Festival and the Hainaut Festival in Belgium, the La Folia Festival in Switzerland and the Valletta Baroque Festival in Malta. In 2024, the ensemble revived its Blessed Echoes program in Canada during a tour that included performances at Salle Bourgie in Montreal, as part of the Early Music in Vancouver season, at Palais Montcalm in Quebec City, and at Isabel Bader center in Kingston.

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The ensemble Près de votre oreille has been collaborating with the harmonia mundi label since 2025 on its recordings, such as the album Lighten mine eies, dedicated to William Lawes, a project that led to a tour in France and Europe, at the Midsummer Festival in Hardelot, at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, and at the Institute of Culture and Arts in Seville. In May 2025, it recorded its next album, L’heure si longtemps perdue, at the Couvent des Dominicains in Guebwiller, dedicated to unpublished court airs from the time of Louis XIII (vocal works by Gabriel Bataille, Antoine Boësset, Pierre Guédron and arrangements for viola da gamba and basso continuo of pieces for baroque lute by René Mezengeau, Le Vieux Gauthier and François Dufaut). Committed to promoting contemporary music since the creation of the piece Le Manuscrit de Voynich, composed by Bulgarian composer Yassen Vodenitcharov for mezzo-soprano and consort of violas da gamba, and the choreographic show Les Trois Ailes du Papillon (pieces by Rika Suzuki, Yassen Vodenitcharov, and Jean-Marc Chouvel), he will be in residence at the TAP in Poitiers in 2026 for his theatrical opera project Les vies ordinaires d'Anaïs. Commissioned from composer Fabien Touchard with a libretto by author Milena Csergo, who will also direct the project (prologue of the project created at the Cité de la Voix in Vézelay in the fall of 2023), the work will receive a double grant for writing assistance for the 2025/2026 season.  The chamber opera explores the subject of birth and the lack of understanding surrounding its challenges, as well as the precariousness that results from it. The piece depicts the life of a singer who is unable to start a recital, caught up in her sudden dream of giving birth. Through this mise en abyme, it presents a multitude of characters who accompany this initiatory journey, such as our parents or a midwife, who allow us to open our eyes to the incredibly rich, sublime and terrifying landscape of each birth. 

In 2026, the ensemble will continue its tour for the album Lighten mine eies. It will make its debut in England, where it will perform several times at Wigmore Hall, as well as during the season of the Institut français in London and Edinburgh and the York Early Music Festival. The Près de votre oreille ensemble received support from the Orange Foundation in 2024 and has been supported by the Société Générale Foundation since 2025. The projects developed receive regular support from the CNM, ADAMI, and SPEDIDAM.