William Christie

Harpsichordist and conductor William Christie was born in Buffalo, New York, on December 19, 1944, and is renowned for restoring the French Baroque repertoire to its former glory. At the helm of Les Arts Florissants since 1979, the French-born Harvard and Yale graduate has exhumed or renovated works by Charpentier, Rameau and Lully, as well as the Bach family and Mozart, Handel and Purcell. Since his landmark performance of Lully's opera Atys in 1987, the Franco-American conductor has won acclaim at major festivals (Zürich, Glyndebourne) and led orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic. An Academician of Fine Arts, William Christie is also involved in training young singers with Le Jardin des Voix and in a heritage project with his Jardins de Thiré, in the Vendée. The compilation Le Baroque Français, released in 2016, brings together his greatest interpretations. In 2024, the year of his eightieth birthday, The Complete Erato Recordings and Bill & Friends, a recital featuring his close friends Justin Taylor, Thomas Dunford, Théotime Langlois de Swarte, Gwendoline Blondeel, Juliette Mey, Myriam Rignol and Emmanuel Resche-Caserta, will be released.