ÉloïseViolin
the
CHIMÆRES
Four players, four instruments, one shared breath. We take the baroque repertoire out of the museum and put it back in the room — in salons, chapels and halls where an audience can hear the wood and the rosin as clearly as the notes.
Our new album Les Ombres Longues is out 14 November on Alpha Vestige.
Listen and pre-order →
Biography
the CHIMÆRES formed in 2019 around a simple disagreement: that early music had become too polite. Two violins, a viola da gamba and a harpsichord — the standard configuration, played without the standard restraint.
The four of us met at the Conservatoire and spent three years arguing about ornamentation before we ever played a concert. What came out of that argument is a sound that is historically informed and entirely unbothered about it: fast where the manuscript allows, quiet where nobody expects, and always closer to speech than to recital.
We have since played the Fondation Singer-Polignac, the Utrecht Early Music Festival and a good number of rooms with no name at all. The second album arrives this November.
Events
2026 — 2027 Season
Before anyone arrives — four chairs, four stands, and the room doing half the work.
Portraits
1 — 4 Individuals
Éloïse
Violin
Portraits
1 — 4NinonViolin
MargueriteViola da gamba
ApollineHarpsichord
Media
Listen & Watch
« They play as if the ink were still wet »
"There is no reverence in this playing and that is exactly the point. The gamba growls, the harpsichord snaps, and the two violins argue like sisters. It is the most alive baroque record of the year."
"Four musicians who refuse to treat the seventeenth century as a period room. Their Marais is furious. Their Couperin is almost tender. Go and hear them in something small and stone-walled."