Ensemble Dumont

Ensemble Dumont

Peter Bennett - director

Formed in 1995, Ensemble Dumont is a group of young singers and instrumentalists who specialise in performing and reconstructing the sacred music of the seventeenth century, Using original instruments, tunings, period Latin pronunciation and music specially edited from sources in London and Paris, the group tries to bring music to life by setting it in its historical and institutional context. As well as future releases for Linn Records, Ensemble Dumont will be recording for the BBC, as well as giving concerts in the UK and Europe.

Peter Bennett, the ensemble's director, was organ scholar at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he read Natural Sciences before going on to study organ, improvisation and conducting at the Hochschule fur Musik in Vienna. After two years there he returned to the UK to take a musicology degree at King's College, London, and to take up the harpsichord. Following masterclasses at the Academia Chigiana in Siena he spent a year in Paris studying the harpsichord, and it was there that he developed a particular interest in early French sacred music. He returned to London in 1995 to pursue a career as a director and continuo player and founded Ensemble Dumont in the same year, drawing on his research in Paris. As well as his work with Ensemble Dumont, Peter continues his research interests and is currently working for a doctorate at King's College, London.