ABOUT | Contre le Temps

The ensemble

Contre le Temps is a female vocal ensemble specializing in medieval music, founded in Basel in 2019 by Julia Marty, Cécile Walch, Karin Weston, and Amy Farnell during their training years at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. Emerging as a prominent force in today's medieval music landscape, Contre le Temps interprets a variety of musical genres from the 11th to the 16th centuries, blending personal musical sensibilities with historically informed knowledge of period sources. The name Contre le Temps is borrowed from two songs, one by the French troubadour Gace Brulé and the other from an anonymous author in the Oxford manuscript, signifying the ensemble's commitment to interpreting this timeless music in an original and timeless manner.

In their original context, the repertoires we perform would have been sung by singers who knew each other well and had a certain habit of singing together. We mimic this musical and personal relationship in our own approach to this music. Rooted in our education at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, we focus on creating a unified sound that respects and celebrates the individuality of each voice in the group. We approach this music with a sense of exploration and experimentation, remaining open to new sonic possibilities. We embody this music in a way only the voice as an instrument can, moving our audience with its intrinsic emotional power, heightened by the melodic strength of four female voices in unison.

We work democratically, without a single director, taking the time to sing the music again and again, trying different phrasings, tempos, and colors, and embracing the slow process necessary for creating our sound. We strive to minimize the distance between the music, ourselves, and our audience, spending time with the repertoire to internalize and memorize it. This gradual process contrasts with the current culture of speed in freelance work in the field of early music. Our approach allows us to delve deeper into the music and offers us the opportunity to rediscover a different sense of time.

With this ensemble, in addition to the endless and exciting work of continually renewing our sound, we aim to develop a special relationship with the repertoire and our audience by innovatively engaging the stage space to break away from the frontal aspect of the classical concert. We also aim to enhance our ability to improvise during performances, a process akin to what a medieval musician might have done, making the performance livelier and more accessible to the audience.

Contre le Temps is currently performing in Europe, notably in France, Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland. The ensemble recently participated in the IYAP program organized by the Laus Polyphoniae festival in Antwerp, and won the Audience Award and Second Prize from the jury at the Van Wassenaer competition in August 2023, along with winning the OOM Prize which includes an upcoming concert tour during the Utrecht Early Music Festival Season 2024-2025. They will perform in the 2024-2025 festivals of AMUZ, York Early Music Christmas Festival, Voix et Route Romane, and Le Petit Festival Bretagne.

Members

Soprano

Cécile Walch

Cécile Walch’s passion for medieval music led her to sing in the Thoronet Academy where she honed her skills with Dominique Vellard, Gerd Türk and Anne Delafosse and sang Monteverdi's Vespers with the Gilles Binchois ensemble. She is also a member of the Barabbas ensemble. In 2017, she joined the Schola Cantorum in Basel where she perfected her singing in the medieval and renaissance repertoires with Dominique Vellard and Katarina Livljanić, Benjamin Bagby, Norbert Rodenkirche. She is also a harpist and has studied historical harps at the Schola with Heidrun Rosenzweig. In parallel to her solo singing studies, Cécile trained as a choral conductor with Jean-Philippe Billmann and Catherine Fender in Strasbourg, as well as in workshops with Benoît and Salomé Haller. Since 2018, she co-directs the ensemble Contre le Temps which specializes in early vocal music and performs regularly in Switzerland and France.

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Mezzo-soprano

Julia Marty

After seven years spent in the children's choir of the Notre-Dame de Paris under the direction of Nicole Corti and Lionel Sow, Julia Marty pursued - in parallel to her studies of classical literature - piano, musical analysis and solfeggio at the Conservatoire du 5ème Arrondissement de Paris. She has also been a member of the vocal ensembles Barabbas, Flores Myrtae, Les Sortilèges and La Fiamma. In 2019 she was selected as a finalist with La Fiamma in the International Van Wassenaer Competition in the Netherlands. In 2018 she began her studies at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, studying voice with Dominique Vellard and Katarina Livljanić. At the Schola, she specializes in medieval and Renaissance repertoires, working with Baptiste Romain, Marc Lewon, Corina Marti and Kathleen Dineen.

Soprano

Karin Weston

Soprano Karin Weston specializes in the performance of early music, with repertoire ranging from troubadour songs to Handel opera. Karin has sung with the medieval ensembles Per-Sonat, Dialogos, Ensemble Parlamento, Moirai, Concordian Dawn, Rubens Rosa, Contre le Temps, Trobár, and Memor, and was a recipient of Early Music America’s Barbara Thornton Scholarship. She can be heard on Moirai’s album Wa funde man sament so manic liet?, and Concordian Dawn’s albums Fortuna Antiqua et Ultra and Medieval Song from Aristotle to Opera, the latter of which was the accompanying CD for scholar Sarah Kay’s most recent book of the same name. Also dedicated to baroque music, Karin was a Young Artist with the Boston Early Music Festival and her roles include Mirtillo (Handel, Il Pastor Fido), Orazio (Amadei/Bononcini/Handel, Muzio Scevola), and Clorinda (Monteverdi, Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda). Karin holds an MA in Historical Performance Practice from Case Western Reserve University where she studied with Ellen Hargis, and currently studies medieval and Renaissance music at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with Katarina Livljanić.

Mezzo-soprano

Amy Farnell

Early music specialist and mezzo-soprano Amy Farnell holds degrees in Church Music from Baylor University (2015), Early Music from the University of Birmingham, England (2017), and Medieval & Renaissance Vocal Performance from Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (2018, 2020, and 2022) in Basel, Switzerland, where she currently resides and studies with Katarina Livljanić. Amy currently sings in a variety of early music ensembles around Europe like Ars Figuralis, La Fiamma, La Cetra Vokalensemble, Re-Renaissance Basel, Ansambl Respsonsorium, and Ad Parnassum Productions. She deeply enjoys the contrast of working also for more modern-music ensembles with repertoires spanning from chant to newly composed works, and thus is featured regularly in groups such as Basler Madrigalisten, The Zurich Chamber Singers, Verba vocalis, QueenSingers, and Junger Kammerchor Basel, sometimes aiding in their performance of chants and earlier repertoire. In 2018 she founded the Texas-based vocal ensemble Quod Balensi, which performs medieval, renaissance, and baroque music focusing on teaching history through the lens of musical storytelling. In 2021 she joined Julia Marty and Cécile Walch as a core vocalist of Contre le Temps, which won second place and the audience prize at the 2023 International Van Wassenaer Competition of the Utrecht Early Music Festival, as well as a concert tour to come in 2025.