This new recording from the award-winning choral group Accentus is dedicated to works by contemporary French composer Philippe Manoury, with whom the choir has regularly collaborated over the past few years. The four pieces are Fragments d’Héraclite, Inharmonies, Slova, and Trakl gedichte. Founded by its director Laurence Equilbey, Accentus is a professional chamber choir which appears regularly at leading concert halls and international festivals. The group collaborates regularly with prestigious conductors and orchestras including Pierre Boulez, Christoph Eschenbach, Orchestre de Paris, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Concerto Köln, and Akademie für Alte Musik. The group’s recordings - notably ‘Transcription’, Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross, Fauré’s Requiem with members of the Orchestre National de France, and ‘Strauss a cappella’ with the Latvian Radio Choir - have received numerous prizes from the musical press. Accentus records exclusively for Naïve.

The French composer Philippe Manoury (born 1952) has always divided his time between two continents. After moving to Brazil in 1978 to teach and lecture, he has taught composition at the University of California at San Diego since 2004. In France, he has been a researcher, composer and teacher at the IRCAM, then head of education with the Ensemble Intercontemporain, professor of composition and electronic music at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et Danse in Lyon, and director of the European Academy of Music at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. He was successively composer in residence with the Orchestre de Paris (1995-2001) and at the Scène Nationale d’Orléans (2001-3).