Lila HAJOSI - Musical direction
Originally a musicologist and opera singer specializing in early music, it was thanks to the Ensemble Irini, which she founded in 2014, that Lila Hajosi took up choir conducting in 2021 and will soon be conducting an orchestra. The Ensemble Irini has allowed her to establish herself as an artistic director through the programs she creates and conducts. She trained from 2012-13 at the Conservatories of Aix-en-Provence (Prix Jeune Espoir Dussurget) and Marseille (Premier Prix d'Art Lyrique) in singing, early music, theater, opera, and chamber music, then at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel (2018-2021), where she was a scholarship recipient. She holds a degree in Medieval Musicology from the University of Montpellier. Even before beginning her musical studies, she discovered a passion for conducting. In 2011, while singing in the amateur choir serving Roland Hayrabédian's students in Marseille, she was fascinated by the finesse and depth of the conductor's work and secretly gleaned valuable lessons from her attendance. This passion, complemented by her studies and enriched by the lessons learned from her singing career with conductors such as Marc Korovitch, Lluis Vilamajó, and Jordi Savall, and nourished by encounters such as those with Teodor Currentzis in master classes, ultimately became her vocation. Since September 2021, she has been training with conductor Sergio Monterisi.
After Maria Nostra, the Ensemble Irini's first album released in 2018 on L'empreinte digitale (Choc de Classica), Lila Hajosi created O Sidera, whose critically acclaimed album released in 2021 will be her first opus as a conductor. Lila Hajosi and the Ensemble Irini have collaborated twice with composer Zad Moultaka. The young conductor and arranger is passionate about the demands of a cappella work, the creation of sound based on meticulous shaping of the harmonic spectrum, the search for and rediscovery of rare repertoires, and the cross-disciplinary connections between music, poetry, history, philology, science, and more.
Since 2015, she has taken her ensemble to prestigious national festivals such as RadioFrance Occitanie Montpellier (2016, 2021), La Cité de la Voix de Vézelay (winner in 2017), Via Aeterna (Mont St-Michel) & Rivage des Voix, Festival d'Arts Sacrés d'Evron, Perpignan, Sinfonia en Périgord, as well as internationally (Misteria Paschalia, Agapê, Barcelona MA festival in 2024, etc.).
In 2022, she conducted the Ensemble Irini at the Philharmonie de Paris (studio) and was awarded the REMA REMArkables program. Her creation "Printemps Sacré" was a finalist for the 2022 REMA awards. In 2024, she will collaborate with percussionist and conductor Tom de Cock on an expanded version of O Sidera, combining works by Xenakis and a four-hand creation based on the Delphic Hymn to Apollo, the first known written work (-138 BC). In 2025, she will collaborate with ICTUS and Riccardo Nova on a joint creation. In 2022, she co-founded the #EllesDirigent network to promote female leadership in classical music. As a speaker, she has appeared at the New Deal, the Early Music Summit, Sciences Po Paris, SACEM, and the Sorbonne.
The voices of the Irini Ensemble
A word from the director
"The artists of Ensemble Irini are carefully chosen above all for their expertise as chamber singers.
Unfortunately, the profession of ensemble artist is not taught in conservatories, where voices are often forced onto a sorting platform with only two outcomes: "chorister" OR "soloist". Yet, beyond the nonsense of this distinction, there is (at least) a third way.
Lila Hajosi
The artists of Ensemble Irini have a technical mastery of their instrument that allows them the luxury of forgetting it in order to concentrate their attention on that of others, that authorizes them to control their vibrato for the good of the polyphonic edifice, that gives them the stamina to hold an a cappella concert where no continuo or orchestra comes to support them and where, with 1 or 2 per voice, they do marathon work.ne.s.
In addition to their vocal technique, the unvarnished purity of their timbres, their great capacity for adaptation, their speed of assimilation, their availability to the director's requests, their ability to blend their voices with those of the ensemble in a common melting pot, the artists chosen for Ensemble Irini all possess a very particular color, a singular personality, curiosity, enthusiasm and a profound joy of making music together. This capacity for wonder, this sincerity in their relationship to their art, this humility in working together while retaining their own voice, and this exceptional strength of investment constitute the cornerstone of Ensemble Irini, the foundation on which it is built and without which it could not exist. "
