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The Italian soprano, Ellen Giacone, began learning the piano and violin when she moved to Paris at the age of 8. She started to train her voice when she was 17 and completed a professional degree of classical singing in June 2011, after taking classes in Paris with Mary Saint-Palais and Robert Expert. She currently studies at the CRR of Paris with Fusako Kondo. During her training she has attended master-classes given by Baroque experts Sara Mingardo and Peter Kooy, as well as Lied and Mélodie experts like Serge Cyferstien, Dalton Baldwin and Anne Le Bozec.
Since 2002, Ellen Giacone has developed a special taste for Baroque repertoire and has performed many concerts, mostly one-to-a-part programmes, with a number of choirs and consorts in Paris, Metz and Geneva. She has also sung several times under the baton of Ton Koopman, in Paris and New York: in 2008 she was praised for her interpretation of George Frideric Handel’s Ode for St Cecilia’s Day in the New York Times. She has been a member of the Monteverdi Apprenticeship Scheme 2012-2013, joining the Monteverdi Choir (Director: John Eliot Gardiner) for various projects all over Europe in 2012-2013. In 2012 she has also sang regularly with other English ensembles including Polyphony (Director: Stephen Layton).
From 2008 to 2014, Ellen Giacone was a member of Athénaïs, a French Baroque ensemble which she recorded two albums with, focused on French Baroque repertoire ("Anima Christi", 2011 & "O Amor Jesu", 2014, Bayard Musique). She has performed various works from the Italian, German and English Baroque repertoire with other French and Dutch ensembles (Europa Barocca, La Fenice, Les Musiciens de Mlle de Guise, Apollo Ensemble). In addition to her solo projects, she regularly sings with La Tempête (Director: Simon-Pierre Bestion) which she recorded with the albums "Paroles à l’absent" (NoMad Music, 2014) and "The Tempest" (Alpha, 2015), Ensemble Pygmalion (Director: Raphaël Pichon), Chœur de Chambre Accentus (Director: Laurence Equilbey), Les Cris de Paris (Director: Geoffroy Jourdain) and Les Arts Florissants (Director: William Christie).
Her first solo album, "Vocalise Ave Maria", was released in 2014 by Monthabor. On stage, she sang various operas and oratorios: Rousseau’s Devin du Village (2006), Belinda in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (2009 and 2014), W.A. Mozart's La finta giardiniera (2011), G.F. Handel's Messiah (2011).
Ellen Giacone also enjoys a variety of solo concert work, especially 20th century composers like Gabriel Fauré (Requiem), Luciano Berio (Chamber Music), Benjamin Britten (The Governess in The Turn of the Screw), or Saariaho (Simone, Quatre Instants). Since 2013, she has been a member of Ensembl-e-change, a group created by Nicolas Agùllo for the interpretation of contemporary repertoire as well as arrangements of traditional music from South-America.
More recently, Ellen Giacone started singing jazz music after having studied the double bass with Christian Gentet for several years; she has recently created The Body and Soul Trio, which focuses on jazz standards for voice, double bass and piano.
In addition to her musical experience, Ellen Giacone was a student of the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Paris and holds a Master of Science in Biology as well as a Master of Business Administration. Currently living in Paris, she speaks Italian, French, Dutch and English fluently, and has studied German. |
