Susie Napper and Margaret Little, the two gambists of Les Voix humaines, have been thrilling audiences worldwide with dashing performances of early and contemporary music for viols since 1985. They are renowned for their spectacular arrangements of a wide variety of music for two viols and have become a world reference for the music of Sainte-Colombe. After being awarded a Diapason d’or for their fourth volume of Sainte-Colombe's Concerts a deux violes esgales, they just received the Opus Award 2007 for Performers of the Year from the Conseil québécois de la musique.
Les Voix humaines has invited prestigious artists to join them in concert and recordings, such as Wieland and Barthold Kuijken, Charles Daniels, Suzie LeBlanc, Rinat Shaham, Matthew White, Eric Milnes, Skip Sempe and Stephen Stubbs. The duo is regularly joined by some of Montreal’s finest young gambists to form the Voix Humaines Consort of viols specializing in the vast 17th-century repertoire for viol consort and presents joint projects with Les Voix baroques (Matthew White’s vocal ensemble).
Les Voix humaines has recorded over thirty discs which have received critical acclaim and prestigious awards (including Diapason d’or, Choc du Monde de la Musique, Repertoire-Classica 10, Goldperg 5, Classics Today 10/10, Prix Opus). They include the complete Poeticall Musicke of Tobias Hume, The 4 Seasons of Christopher Simpson, the complete Le Nymphe di Rheno of Johannes Schenck, several discs with soprano Suzie LeBlanc and countertenor Daniel Taylor, a Telemann disc with renowned Belgian flutist Barthold Kuijken and a Marais disc with world famous gambist Wieland Kuijken. Their recording of the complete Concerts a deux violes esgales by Sainte-Colombe (4 double CDs) is a world premiere. Les Voix humaines record for the ATMA label.
The duo has toured in North America, Mexico, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Israel, performing is prestigious festivals such as Early Music Vancouver, the Festival Internacional Cervantino, the Brighton International Music Festival, the Festival Oude Musiek, Holland, the Boston Early Music Festival, the Summer Festivities of Early Music in Prague and the Israel Festival.
Susie Napper
Cellist, gambist, continuo player par excellence, Susie Napper is known for her colorful, even controversial performances of both solo and chamber repertoire of the 17th and 18th centuries. Having spent her childhood in an artistic milieu in London, in her late teens she moved to New York to study at the Juilliard School, then to the Paris Conservatoire. San Francisco followed, where, after a foray into contemporary music, she co-founded and directed the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. Since then she has spent two decades with a foot on either side of the Atlantic as principal cellist with several groups including Stradivaria in France, the Studio de Musique Ancienne de Montréal and Les Boréades in Montréal, and the Trinity Consort of Portland. Her concert tours have taken her as far afield as China, Japan, New Zealand, India, the Middle East, as well as most European countries. As a member of the very active viol duo Les Voix Humaines, she has discovered a new facet of musical expression in the form of musical arranging, thus providing an endlessly fascinating new repertoire for two viols.
Her recordings, which include most of the known repertoire for two viols, can be heard on Harmonia Mundi, EMI, Erato, ADDA, CBC Records, Naxos, and most notably on the ATMA label.
But her true vocation is not on the concert stage or the recording studio. The kitchen is the center of her domain, where she creates dishes both colorful and controversial for her own pleasure as well as that of her guests.
Margaret Little
Margaret Little was born and raised in Montreal in a musical family, playing violin, piano, recorder and guitar as a child. She discovered the viola da gamba at the age of eleven and fell in love instantly with the instrument and early music repertoire. After studying science and then visual arts, she came back to music and the viol in her early twenties.
Margaret has been performing since 1975 as a soloist and a chamber musician on the viola da gamba and baroque viola with various groups including the Studio de Musique ancienne de Montréal, Les Idées Heureuses, Arion, Musica Divina, and she founded the viola da gamba duo "Les Voix Humaines" with Susie Napper over fifteen years ago. She has been invited to play with many early music groups across Canada and the USA as a gambist, baroque violinist and violist (such as Rebel, Four Nations, Trinity Consort, Aradia, The Publick Musick, Les Boréades, Les Violons du Roy, etc.) and has toured in
North America, Mexico and Europe. She can be heard regularly on the SRC and CBC networks. She has also performed for Radio-France, the Spanish radio and the BBC. She has recorded for Damzell, UMMUS, Naxos, CBC Records, and mostly for ATMA.
Margaret Little teaches the viola da gamba and baroque ensembles at the Universitéde Montréal and at the CAMMAC Lake Mac Donald Music Centre.
