In just a few years, Félicien Brut and his accordion have become an emblematic figure in the world of classical music. This wasn’t his plan from the get go, though. Although he discovered the accordion at a very young age, he originally began with folk and musette-style music. After studying under Jacques Mornet, Félicien won the three greatest international accordion competitions in 2007. This helped spark his interest in classical music, a repertoire he had not really explored beforehand.
In 2017, on the advice of Richard Galliano whom he deeply admired, Félicien took on a wild challenge: reconcile musette and classical music in a single concert, Le Pari des Bretelles. He commissioned the first piece for accordion and string quintet, Suite Musette, from the composer Thibault Perrine. This project was an immediate success and propelled him to the forefront of a new generation of classical instrumentalists.
This paved the way for Félicien’s numerous chamber music collaborations, with the Quatuor Hermès, Édouard Macarez, Julien Martineau, Lucienne Renaudin- Vary and, most recently, Thibaut Garcia, among many others. Convinced that the accordion also has a place as a solo instrument with an orchestra, Félicien commissioned another project from Thibault Perrine, this time a series of pieces combining musette and classical music composed for the 2018 edition of the Un violon sur le sable (“A violin on the sand”) music festival on the French Atlantic coast and performed with the Cannes Orchestra in 2019. In 2020, Félicien dreamed up the NEUF project in homage to Beethoven, continuing to combine different styles and to fight for new creations for his instrument.
