Ensemble Près de votre oreille, Robin Pharo

Biography

By its strangeness and poetry, the name of the ensemble Près de votre oreille (‘Close to your ear’) has become the singular identity of a young instrumental and vocal formation, wishing to create atypical projects. Since 2017, Robin Pharo is following his desire to create and cultivate musical and human encounters that have shaped his artistic personality. The ensemble reveals many unusual jewels, which arouse curiosity, and affirms its desire to defend in the same time repertoires of the past, in particular from the Renaissance until the end of the Baroque period as well as contemporary creation. By conducting many experimental works on our relationship to performing arts, he places at the heart of its evolution a reflection on classical music, and propose performances, shows, recitals, meetings and sharing. Since its creation, the ensemble ‘Close to your ear’ has appeared all over France and the rest of Europe, as well as in Canada. It has recorded several CDs: L’Anonyme Parisien (Paraty, 2016), Come Sorrow (Paraty, 2019), Suite d’un goût étranger (Château de Versailles Spectacles, 2021), Blessed Echoes (Paraty, 2023) and The Waves (Scala Music, 2023).  The ensemble is based in the Limousin area of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, where it has put on a host of first performances. In 2025, in partnership with the Ferme de Villefavard, it will mount its first multi-arts festival, ‘L’Éveil de l’automne’ (‘The Awakening of Autumn’). Since 2020 the ensemble has been supported by the music sponsorship fund of the Caisse des Dépôts, main sponsor, and from 2024 has also received support from the Fondation Orange, and the DRAC of Nouvelle-Aquitaine.

Robin Pharo began his apprenticeship in music and the viola da gamba with Jean-Louis Charbonnier, Caroline Howald, Ariane Maurette, and finally with Christophe Coin, at the Conservatoire Supérieur National de Musique et de Danse de Paris. He is an active founder member of the quartet Nevermind, with whom he won both Third Prize and the Festival Prize at the Van Wassenaer Competition in Utrecht and whose latest disc is devoted to a previously unreleased arrangement of the Goldberg Variations (Alpha Classics). Robin Pharo appeared alongside Benjamin Lazar in the stage show L'Autre monde ou Les États et empires de la Lune, and has also worked with other ensembles such as Pygmalion, Aedes, Le Poème Harmonique, La Rêveuse, Marguerite-Louise, and La Tempête. In April 2012 he performed as a duo with Bobby McFerrin at the Théâtre du Châtelet. He collaborated with choreographer Thierry Thieû Niang, arranging the music for the show Au cœur, and also took part in the staged spectacle Romances inciertos devised by dancer François Chaignaud and director NinALaisné. Robin has worked with several composers, including Philippe Hersant, Yassen Vodenicharov, Rika Suzuki and Jean-Marc Chouvel. In 2023 he participated at the Hyper Weekend Festival, where he premiered the first phase of the project Phonographie devised by the Code Collectif, performing as a duo with the electronic musician Superpoze, with whom he also worked on the album Nova Cardinale (Grand Musique Management, 2022).

robinpharo.com