Damien Top

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Damien Top (born 1963) is a French tenor, musicologist and conductor, and is artistic director of the International Albert Roussel Festival.

Damien Top is one of the world’s most distinguished exponents of contemporary French music as singer, conductor, composer and musicologist. Honored by the French government in 2002 with the prestigious "Prix Charles Oulmont - Fondation de France" for his outstanding contributions to French culture, he serves as artistic director for the Lotte Lehmann Foundation, which he represents throughout the world in recitals and recordings.

Graduate of the Conservatoire of Lille and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, Damien Top studied with Galina Vishnevskaya and Jean-Christophe Benoit. He has appeared in opera, operetta, and sacred works, as well as performing the entire range of French mélodie. In 1993, he was engaged by the Opera de Paris-Bastille to sing in a new production of Benvenuto Cellini by Berlioz under the direction of Myung Whun Chung. In 2002, Damien Top sang and conducted the cantata L'oiseau a vu tout cela by Sauguet at the Académie Française.

Many distinguished contemporary composers have created works for him, including Jacques Chailley, who has proclaimed, "...l'art de Damien Top est exemplaire," as well as Isabelle Aboulker, Francoise Choveaux, Suzanne Joly, Alain Feron, Wally Karveno, Max Pinchard, Jean-Christophe Rosaz; New Zealander Edwin Carr, Dutch composer Harry Cox, Roumanian Horia Surianu and Australians Houston Dunleavy, Peter Tahourdin, Robert Trumble and Felix Werder. Top has recorded Massenet song cycles (BNL), romances of de Coussemaker (R.C.P.), art songs of Goué (SyPr) and melodies of Guillon-Verne, nephew of Jules Verne (SyPr). “Diapason magazine” lauded him for his “impeccable taste.”

He has given recitals at Flaneries Musicales de Reims for the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation, Musicales en Valois, Festival des Grands Crus de Bourgogne, Festival de la Mélodie Française of Toulouse, as well as performances in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Macedonia, New Zealand, and the United States.

A student of Sergiu Celibidache, he has conducted the Orchestre du Festival Roussel, Joseph Jongen Ensemble, Czech Chamber Soloists, and Prague Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, among others. In his programs, he focuses on the music of our time, rediscovering many neglected works of Roussel, d'Indy, Delvincourt, Jersild, Eklund, Enesco, Guillon, Martinet, Sandagerdi, Martinu, Looten, Macha, Ratovondrahety and Tahourdin.

Son of the poet Andrée Brunin, Damien Top gives poetry recitals (Alliance Française of Sydney, University of Melbourne, University of Hawaii, Wo International Center), exploring a wide range of song texts set by grat composers and introducing the audience to the poetry of our time (Anthologie de la poesie française, Poetes feminins contemporains, Centenaire Verlaine, etc.)

His biography of Albert Roussel was published in 2000 by Seguier and is considered the standard work on the subject. He has also written full length studies on Sergei Rachmaninov and Rene de Castera, for which he was awarded the Prix du Salon du Livre d’Hossegor. He is frequently invited to speak on radio and television (France Musiques, France Culture, Hawaii Public Radio, Radio Suisse Romande; FR3, NPS Dutch TV); to present papers on French music at international conferences and to give masterclasses in French art song at University of Melbourne, Monash University, La Trobe University, University of Performing Arts at Wollongong, Wellington University, James Maddison University, Université de Sherbrooke, Université de Montreal. Damien Top writes a monthly music column in "Politique Magazine." Member of the SACEM, his compositions have been played in France, Belgium, Italy and in the United States. A member of the board of directors of the Lotte Lehmann Foundation, he is also scientific advisor of the University of Roma III, director of the "Centre International Albert-Roussel" which he founded in 1992 and of the "Albert-Roussel International Festival."

Discography : Jules Massenet : Poème d'avril, Poème du Souvenir, Poème d'hiver, Expressions Lyriques BNL 1992 Von Appel : Il triompho della musica, Naxos 2001 Edmond de Coussemaker : Romances et chansons, RCP 2003 Émile Goué : mélodies, SyPr 2006 Gabriel Fauré : En sourdine, Arabesque recordings 2007 Claude Guillon-Verne : mélodies, SyPr 2007 Émile Goué : mélodies avec quatuor, Recital 2008