Hélène Duret

French clarinettist, improviser and composer
After studying cinema/theatre at the University of Montpellier III, she studied classical music and jazz at the CRR of Montpellier and then at the Royal Flemish Conservatory in Brussels. Hélène Duret is resident at the Cité internationale des arts de Paris for the 2021/2022 season and became a member of the prolific Tricollectif in November 2021.
Through her many encounters, Hélène Duret developed a taste for collective projects, bringing together artists from different worlds, all driven by a creative energy, from which a rich palette of projects emerges.
In the belief that sound and music can be perceived as sound textures and that musical traditions benefit from being diverted, she self-produces her own projects directed through composition, jazz and improvisation with FUR trio and the Hélène Duret Synestet quintet.
In 2020 Hélène Duret, was one of the winners of Jazz Migration #7 with the chamber trio Suzanne, founded in 2020 under the influence of folk and chamber music with the violist Maëlle Desbrosses and the guitarist Pierre Tereygeol.
Hélène Duret also explores improvisation and traditions through traditional music. In 2011, she met Chloé Lucas and Ambre Vuillermoz and co-founded the Syrto quartet, playing acoustic Balkan music. She later became fascinated by Caribbean retro music and in 2016 co-founded Le Bal de Marie-Galante with Jordi Cassagne, Théo Lanau, Léo Rathier and Benjamin Sauzereau. Based in Brussels between 2013 and 2021, Hélène organised, imaginesd and programmed monthly indie music evenings called The Pool Sessions with drummer Théo Lanau and pianist Camille-Alban Spreng.
Active both on the Belgian and French scenes, she marks this twin anchorage by creating the Lille company La Nageuse with her partners Théo Lanau, Jordi Cassagne, Léo Rathier, Andréa Schindler, Yoan Bellefonte and Benjamin Sauzereau.
With a view to keeping an open mind, she has always linked the arts. From 2004 to 2019, she created the musical theatre group Zorozora with Charly Astié and Sylvain Rabourdin. Hélène also regularly creates and tours internationally as an actor/musician (Avignon Off Festival from 2010 to 2019, Paris, The Hague, Casablanca, Reunion Island, Romania, Switzerland, Germany, Poland etc.).
She worked with the playwright Emilie Hériteau in Les Bacchantes by Euripides (2016) and M. De Pourceaugnac by Molière (2009), as well as with the director Josanne Rousseau and the author Jacques Rebotier in Omme Hanimal (2008).
Artists she has worked include Amrat Hussein, Fanny Vicens, Barbara Wiernik, Alain Pierre, Adrien Lambinet, Quentin Biardeau, Bruno Ducret, Fil Caporali, Flavio Spampinato, Grzegorz Marciniak etc.