Vincent Dumestre

His taste for the arts, creative feeling for Baroque aesthetics, explorer’s flair and love of collective projects naturally led Vincent Dumestre to delve into the repertoire of the 17th and 18th centuries and in 1998 create the tailor-made ensemble Le Poème Harmonique. Today, Vincent Dumestre is one of the most inventive and versatile artisans of the Baroque revival movement as a conductor and director, while continuing to pursue his first love – playing plucked string instruments.

He graduated from the École du Louvre (art history) and the École normale de musique de Paris (classical guitar), and studied lute, baroque guitar and theorbo with Hopkinson Smith, Eugène Ferré and Rolf Lislevand, playing with the Ricercar Consort, La Grande Écurie & La Chambre du Roy, Hespèrion XX etc. 

 

Enthusiastic collaborator with artists from other disciplines such as puppeteers (Mimmo Cuticchio), directors (Omar Porras, Benjamin Lazar), choreographers (Julien Lubeck, Cécile Roussat), and circus artists (Mathurin Bolze), he is in demand with Le Poème Harmonique on the world’s greatest stages of Baroque music, and is also regularly invited as a guest conductor by the ensembles musicAeterna, Musica Florea, Arte Suonatori, the Orchestre régional de Normandie, Capella Cracoviensis and Orkiestra Historyczna.  

 

His recordings have received the highest prestigious awards from the press, such as the Diapason d’Or and Choc de l’année 2022 from Classica for Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (Château de Versailles Spectacles) or the Diamant from Opéra magazine for Vivaldi’s Nisi Dominus (Alpha Classics).  

 

Vincent Dumestre is an Officer of the National Order of Arts and Letters and a Knight of the National Order of Merit.