Ensemble El Sol / Chloé Sévère REINAS

The queen is a female figure at once powerful and gentle. In chess, the Queen’s power is unequalled: she moves far afield and in all directions, whereas the King most often remains on his territory, moving little and slowly. One might see in this distribution of roles a resemblance to the political strategies employed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by nations, which sent their princesses to marry kings all over the world, while the latter married the princesses who were brought to them. The queen did not come to destroy, as in chess, but to marry and to love; she brought nations together, expanded territories and established peace. 

The Ensemble El Sol, directed by the harpsichordist Chloé Sévère, has devoted itself since its creation to Spanish and Latin American Baroque music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Founded in 2016, the ensemble consists of Dagmar Saskova and Angélique Pourreyron (voice), Ronald Martin (viola da gamba), Caroline Lieby (Baroque harp), Victorien Disse (Baroque theorbo and guitar), Laurent Sauron (Baroque percussion) and Chloé Sévère (harpsichord). The decision to use a continuo group combining several instruments offers the possibility of a wide range of bold transcriptions and a variety of colours in the accompaniment, in accordance with the types of instrumentarium employed in the Baroque period.