Léo Ferré:

Performances, Recordings and Resources

Alongside his work on Franz Schmidt, Jonathan is actively promoting the music of Léo Ferré. He has created a website and research initiative he created and built to make the case for another composer he believes has been unjustly overlooked.

Best known as one of France's great chansonniers, Ferré (1916–1993) was also a serious classical composer — he sang Renaissance polyphony as a boy chorister, observed Ravel at work in Monte Carlo, and studied under Arturo Toscanini — and left behind a substantial orchestral catalogue, including the oratorio La Chanson du Mal-Aimé for soloists, chorus and orchestra on a text by Apollinaire, alongside symphonies, ballets, and settings of Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Verlaine.

Jonathan has created leoferre-composer.com to document this catalogue and bring it to conductors and orchestras.

At the heart of this project Jonathan will perform and record Ferré's classical works with orchestras internationally over the coming years.