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The French tenor and choral conducor, Joël Suhubiette, played the piano very early. He then went on to undertake musical studies at the Conservatoire à rayonnement régional de Toulouse. He quickly joined the early music department where he studied singing with John Elwes and Guillemette Laurens. At the University of Toulouse Le Mirail he studied musicology and choral conducting with Alix Bourbon, whose vocal ensemble he joined which allowed him, at a very young age, to sing under the direction of Michel Corboz, Jean-Claude Malgoire, Gustav Leonhardt, etc. It was at this time, in 1985, that he founded Les Éléments with friends singers from the Conservatoire and the University, an ensemble that later became the chamber choir he still conducts in Toulouse.
Joël Suhubiette then began his professional career as a singer with Les Arts Florissants of William Christie. In 1986 his meeting with Philippe Herreweghe played a decisive role: for twelve years he sang in his ensembles - La Chapelle Royale in Paris and the Collegium Vocale Gent in Belgim - with which he took part in more than thirty recordings and discovered the diversity of the vocal repertoire to which the Belgian conductor devoted himself with his two prestigious choirs. In 1990, Philippe Herreweghe gave him the role of assistant within both his choirs for the following eight years, preparing the choirs for productions and recordings, and allowing him to work on a large repertoire representing four centuries of vocal music.
In 1993, Joël Suhubiette took over the management of the Ensemble Jacques Moderne, whose founder Jean-Pierre Ouvrard died prematurely at the end of 1992. It was the beginning of a new musical adventure that immersed him in the universe of a cappella polyphony of the French, English and Spanish Renaissance music to which he dedicated some of his recordings. (Regnard, Jean Mouton, Guerrero, Morales). Very soon, he extended the ensemble's repertoire to the composers of the 17th and 18th centuries, giving a preponderant place to the works of the first German Baroque, (Johann Hermann Schein, Heinrich Schütz and Dietrich Buxtehude). A little later, he performed with the Ensemble Jacques Moderne, made up of a choir of 16 professional singers plus an ensemble of early instruments, the motets, passions, Mass in B minor (BWV 232) and short masses by J.S. Bach, anthems by Purcell and George Frideric Handel, Purcell's operas (Dido and Aeneas, King Arthur), and the French Baroque repertoire.
In 1997, in Toulouse, Joel Suhubiette founded the Chamber choir Les Éléments, consisting of 16 to 40 singers. He began conducting the a cappella repertoire of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Baroque oratorios (J.S. Bach, G.F. Handel) classical (W.A. Mozart, Haydn) and commissioned a large number of works from contemporary composers (Patrick Burgan, Ivan Fedele, Philippe Hersant, Pierre Jodlowski, Alexandros Markeas, Zad Moultaka, Vincent Paulet, Ton That Tiet, Antonio Chagas Rosa). He also plays Igor Stravinsky, Francis Poulenc, Benjamin Britten, Luigi Dallapiccola, Luciano Berio, Mantovani, Dusapin. Thanks to his assiduous practice of the a cappella repertoire, the chamber choir "Les Éléments" became one of the most important choirs in France, and with it, Suhubiette performed in Europe, the USA, Canada, Tunisia, Lebanon, Egypt. The ensemble was the guest of many conductors (Michel Plasson, Christophe Rousset, Philippe Herreweghe, Christophe Coin, John Nelson, Emmanuel Krivine, Lawrence Foster, Marc Minkowski, Jérémie Rhorer... In 2005, the Ensemble was laureate of the Liliane Bettencourt Prize for choral singing awarded by the Academy of Fine Arts, and in 2006, it was consecrated "Ensemble de l'année" at the Victoires de la musique classique ceremony and today is recognised as one of France’s greatest choirs.
With his two ensembles, Joël Suhubiette has appeared in the principal French regional venues and festivals, and frequently in Paris (Cité de la Musique, Théâtre du Chatelet, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées…). He has toured throughout Europe (Spain, Portugal, Germany, UK, Switzerland, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Latvia, Czech Republic…), Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco, Japan and the Americas (USA, Canada, Colombia). He has recorded more than 25 albums with many labels such as Virgin Classics, Éditions Hortus, Calliope, Ligia Digital, Naïve Records, l’Empreinte Digitale and more recently, Mirare. Many of his records have received awards and critical acclaim.
Joël Suhubiette also conducts another type of vocal repertoire, namely opera, at the Festival of Saint-Céré with the opera company Opéra Eclaté, at the Opéra de Massy where he conducted the French premiere of Kurt Weill’s Silbersee, and at the Dijon Opera, which has invited him since 1993 to conduct W.A. Mozart’s operas (Don Giovanni, Die Zauberflöte, Le nozze di Figaro, Die Entführung aus dem Serail) and, in 2007, les Caprices de Marianne by Henri Sauguet. He has also conducted comedy operas by Jacques Offenbach. He is often invited as conductor of the Orchestre of Pau Pays de Béarn, with which he perform classical and contemporary works.
In the oratorio domain, the programmes led Joël Suhubiette to conduct several major French orchestras and instrumental ensembles, including the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Orchestre de Chambre de Toulouse, Orchestre Baroque Les Passions, Les Folies Françoises, Café Zimmermann, Gli Incogniti, Concerto Soave, Ensemble Baroque de Limoges, Pau-Pays de Béarn orchestra, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Ensemble Ars Nova etc.
It is in this spirit of openness to several musical worlds that the Abbey-school of Sorèze in the Tarn département offered Joël Suhubiette in 2006 to become Artistic Director of its Festival Musique des Lumières. In 2007, he was awarded the honour of a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. Since 2008, Suhubiette has been teaching regularly in the choir conducting class of the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Lyon. In 2014, he was awarded the rank of Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters honour by the French Ministry of Culture. |
