Athens-born harpsichord and organ player, director and musicologist Iakovos Pappas has focussed his musical career on 17th and 18th century rhetoric, declamation and gestures.
He worked closely with French baroque opera director Philippe Lenaël and his research led to his theory of the intellectual and physical activity of vocal emission and the mechanism of pronunciation for baroque music.
He has thus become one of the few musical experts in Europe able to teach sung declamation.
In 1992 he founded the Almazis ensemble and applied his research directing numerous staged productions including Egidio Duni’s L’Isle des Foux (2007, Théâtre de Dreux), André Campra’s Le Carnaval de Venise (2010) and Danican Philidor’s Le Maréchal Ferrant (Péniche Opéra 2005, Festival de la Chabotterie 2007).
He taught singing and declamation at the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles from 1993 to 1997. A tireless pioneer, he is the reason many works were recreated in performance.
His discography bears witness to his eclecticism and includes: Pancrace Royer, Gaspard Le Roux and Jean-François Dandrieu's harpsichord pieces, Giovanni Battista Platti's harpsichord sonatas, the transcription of Vivaldi's Sonatas opus 1 and Nicolas-Louis Clérambault's Les Fables de Jean de La Fontaine.
