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Harpsichordist
Jean Rondeau is a star of his instrument, having won several major prizes for his first few recordings. In addition to playing Baroque harpsichord music, he also maintains a career as a jazz pianist and as a film music composer.
Unrelated to the race car driver of the same name,
Rondeau was born in Paris on April 23, 1991. When he was six, he heard a harpsichord on the radio and demanded to know how to make that sound. For the next ten years, he took lessons from
Blandine Verlet.
Rondeau went on to the Paris Conservatory and then to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where he studied with
James Johnstone and
Carole Cerasi. Several awards announced a forthcoming major talent, including a first prize at the harpsichord competition of the Musica Antiqua Festival in Bruges, Belgium, and a second prize at the Prague Spring International Harpsichord Competition, in 2012, and the Young Soloist award in the Francophone Public Radio Competition in 2014. On the strength of these,
Rondeau was signed to the Erato label later that year. His recitals have included a critically acclaimed debut at the French embassy in Washington, D.C., and a performance at the Festival des Saintes.
Rondeau performs with the period-instrument ensemble Nevermind, founded with three friends from the Paris Conservatory, and with the jazz ensemble, Note Forget.
Heard with
François Lazarevitch on a 2014 Alpha recording of Bach's flute sonatas,
Rondeau made his solo debut on Erato with the recital Bach Imagine in 2015. He followed that up with Vertigo, an album featuring music by
Rameau and Pancrace Royer,
Bach Dynastie, an album of keyboard concertos by members of the
Bach family, and an album of
sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti. The latter album won a Diapason d'Or. In the coronavirus year of 2020, he was slated to release the album
Barricades.
Rondeau composed the soundtrack to the German film Paula, about painter Paula Modersohn-Becker, in 2016, and that music was also released on Erato.