Florence Bolton

Born in France in 1970, Florence Bolton is a viola da gamba (a.k.a. viol) player and founder of early music ensemble La Rêveuse. She began her musical journey at the age of 7 when she studied the recorder and the harpsichord. She then became interested in the viola da gamba – a fretted stringed instrument played with a bow - and studied the instrument at the Conservatoire de Saint-Cloud with Sylvia Abramovicz. In 2001, she won first prize for viola da gamba from the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et danse de Lyon, where she studied with Marianne Muller. Alongside her music studies, she studied Asian languages and earned a master’s degree in Japanese. A soloist who specializes in early music, she collaborated with several ensembles – including La Fenice, Doulce Mémoire, the Céladon ensemble , Il Seminario Musicale , the Pierre Robert ensemble, and Le Poème Harmonique – before forming her own early music group La Rêveuse in 2004. The ensemble’s first album was 2005’s L'Autre Monde, Ou les Etats & Empires de la Lune, which contained songs composed by Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac. La Rêveuse signed with the Mirare label and recorded works by Locke, Purcell, Buxtehude, Reinken, Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Sébastien de Brossard, Henry Lawes, Telemann, Marais, and Louis de Caix d'Hervelois. The ensemble also released works such as London Circa 1700 - Purcell & His Generation (2018), London Circa 1720 - Corelli's Legacy (2020), and Le Concert des Oiseaux & le Carnaval des Animaux en Péril (2023), which featured compositions by Purcell, Couperin, Rameau, Saint-Saëns, Ravel, and Britten mixed with animal sounds. Florence Bolton is also a musicologist and teacher, holding workshops and teaching viola da gamba classes.

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