Jean-Marc Fessard


Jean-Marc Fessard is a French classical clarinetist.

Life

Born in Étampes, Fessard studied at the Conservatoire de Paris at the Paris 8 University and at the Higher Academy of Music in Gdańsk in Poland where he received the title of Doctor of Arts. He is the winner of the Paris International Competitions, Illzach, Gdańsk. Fessard received 1st prize in the Interpretation Competition Jacques Lancelot. He has recorded about thirty CDs for labels such as Dux, Naxos, Signature Radio France, Triton, Kalidisc, Accord Universal, Clarinet Classics...Yvonne Loriod-.
Fessard is particularly interested in the rare clarinet repertoire, notably recording Alexandre Tansman's clarinet music, Charles Koechlin's sonatas, Jacques Castérède, Jacques Bondon's and Henri Tomasi's concerti and Piotr Perkowski's pieces for clarinet and piano, Antoni Szałowski, Piotr Moss and Karol Rathaus. In 2011 he gave the Warsaw Radio Tansman's Concerto with the Silesian Chamber Orchestra and recorded Piotr Moss's clarinet concerto D'un silence..., a huge musical fresco of forty minutes in one movement, with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 2008, he collaborated with Krzysztof Penderecki for the premiere of his Sinfonietta for clarinet and string orchestra during the Yerevan festival in Armenia. He has dedicated and created numerous contemporary pieces for clarinet and bass clarinet such as the Bruno Letort's Clarinet Concerto, Shkodra inspired by the character of La frontière invisible by François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters and premiered at the Szczecin Philharmonic and Michel Lysight's concerto for bass clarinet premiered with the Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie.
He has performed with the Polish National Radio Orchestra, the Poznań Philharmonic Orchestra, the Gdańsk Philharmonic Orchestra, the Katowice Philharmonic Orchestra, the Azerbaijan National Orchestra, the Szczecin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, l'Orchestre de chambre wallon, the Zagreb Chamber Orchestra, the Camerata Wrocław, the Élysée Quartet, the Ébène Quartet and the Wieniawski Quartet. He is a member of the Ensemble Sillages with whom he recorded a monograph dedicated to Allain Gaussin which received the Grand Prix of the Académie Charles-Cros in 2014
Fessard is invited for master classes by the Higher Academies of Prague, Poznań, Gdańsk, Katowice, Baku, the Royal College of Music in London, the University, the Chinese Central Conservatory of Music and the Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie. Fessard is also regularly invited as a member of the jury of the Alexandre Tansman International Competition in Lódz, the Johannes Brahms International Competition in Gdańsk, the Lódz Chamber Music Competition, the Kurpiński Competition in Włoszakowice and the Conservatoire de Paris Competitions. He is the author of L'évolution de la clarinette and a clarinet method Écoute, je joue!, published by Gérard Billaudot in Paris, a publisher for which he is collection director.

Discography