Les Kapsber' Girls

Les Kapsber’girls, an ensemble of four singers and instrumentalists directed by the lutenist Albane Imbs, has already released its debut album (Che fai tù?, released on Muso) which received several awards. The group now joins Alpha for several recordings, starting with Vous avez dit Brunettes? – ‘brunettes’ being the name of the chansons that lovers crooned in each others’ ears by the Bassin d’Apollon or among the groves of the Petit Trianon at Versailles Palace, undeniably light in character yet powerfully authentic. Seventeenth-century France was home to a host of artists whose talent served the nobility and the bourgeoisie, who were extremely partial to these airs. Performing them as vocal solos or duets with lute or viol, Les Kapsber’girls bring back to life, more than three centuries later, these works published by Ballard & Fils, printers to the Sun King, alongside such little-known composers as Julie Pinel and Giuseppe Saggione.

Formed in 2015 by four young musicians, Les Kapsber’girls, by their very name, send a nod and a wink to one of their favorite composers. It is thus quite natural that their first recording be dedicated to the works of Girolamo Kapsberger, a virtuoso musician and exceptional composer in Rome in the early XVIIth century. The extreme variety of his output bears witness to the artistic effervescence of pre-baroque Italy and of the immense talent of one of the geniuses of music history. His four books of villanelles are veritable gems of music; from one work to another he takes us to the heart of a world of bucolic poetry with some instructive contrasts.

The works of the theorbist Bellerofonte Castaldi and the guitarist Domenico Pellegrini are little known but nonetheless remain fascinating to their performers today, as they not only give clear proof of fertile musical imagination but also raise many questions about how they should be performed. Although Castaldi was the first to praise the innovative style of his friend Monteverdi, his works are marked by a strong Renaissance spirit. Castaldi and Pellegrini chose not only the most classical forms (dances, courantes, galliards) but also the most archaic (branles, batailles, canzoni). Lutenist, theorbist and baroque guitarist Albane Imbs now presents her first solo album after having founded her own ensemble, Les Kapsber'girls and played in ensembles led by Jordi Savall, François Lazarevitch, Raphaël Pichon and Rolf Lislevand, the great Norwegian lutenist/theorbist who was her teacher. Here, Imbs and Lislevand perform Castaldi’s Capricci a due stromenti, the only example of music written for a duo of theorbo and tiorbino, this latter being a miniature theorbo conceived and played by Castaldi himself.