VOICE RESIDENCY 2024: DISCOVER THE 14 SELECTED INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS! | Festival d’Aix—en—Provence

For its 26th edition, the Académie has selected 14 artists for the 2024 Voice Residency — ten singers, three harpsichordist-singing coaches, and one conductor — for this programme focused on improvement and openness.

The 2024 Voice Residency continues the tradition of singing-based residencies at the Académie since its inception. It is being held this year during a period that covers the end of rehearsals for the Festival’s opera productions and the opening week of the Festival’s 76th edition, and will thus provide the participants with a stimulating environment, visibility, and unique opportunities for artistic and interprofessional encounters.

The Académie received a record number of applications for this residency, with 453 applications from 51 nationalities! After a first selection, 66 applicants were invited to the final auditions in New York (22 applicants in October 2023) and Paris (44 applicants in November 2023). The jury consisted of directors of the Académie and Darrell Babidge, the residency’s mentoring artist and chair of the voice faculty at The Juilliard School in New York. The selection committee strove to create a good balance in the artists’ vocal and instrumental diversity, backgrounds, and cultures, in order to achieve the fullest representation possible of the world of opera.

Invited for the first time in 2023, Darrell Babidge, voice teacher and chair of the voice department at The Juilliard School, will be at the helm of this residency, offering the artists his listening skills and advice. In addition, the Académie is inviting the singer and conductor Barbara Hannigan to lead the first two weeks of the residency, with her passion for a very broad vocal repertoire and her relaxed vision of the opera artist’s profession. The pianist, vocal coach and conductor Alphonse Cemin, a former académicien, will complete this panel of mentoring artists.

The residency programme includes master classes; two concerts programmed as part of Aix en Juin; musical encounters organised with Passerelles, the cultural initiatives department of the Festival; and a closing concert with Le Concert d’Astrée conducted by its musical director Emmanuelle Haïm and the conductor in residence Camille Delaforge. Each concert focuses on a particular area of the repertoire: great opera arias; arias and art songs written after 1970, including the world premiere of a piece commissioned from the Iranian composer Golfam Khayam; and French baroque music.

The schedule of concerts and public master classes is as follows:

Public master class by Alphonse Cemin - 21 June, 11:30 AM at the Hôtel Maynier d’Oppède
Concert #1 - 24 June, 9 PM at the Hôtel Maynier d’Oppède
Public master class by Barbara Hannigan and Golfam Khayam - 26 June, 11:30 AM at the Hôtel Maynier d’Oppède
Concert #2 - 27 June, 9 PM at the Hôtel Maynier d’Oppède
Public master class by Darrell Babidge - 29 June, 11:30 AM at the Hôtel Maynier d’Oppède
Final concert - 9 July, 9 PM at the Hôtel Maynier d’Oppède

Adami, a long-standing partner of the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, once again proves its commitment to performing artists with its support for the residency for women conductors. Through this programme, which the Académie created in 2021, Adami participates in the training, promotion and career development of a new generation of women conductors.