Ensemble Artifices was born out of Alice Julien-Laferrière’s research into the influence of the art of imitation on the violin idiom, a pregnant theme of Baroque thinking keen on trompe-l’oeil and illusion techniques.

Since the ensemble was created in 2013, Alice Julien-Laferrière and the artists she surrounds herself with have been devising programmes that bring together various domains: literature, historical research, drama, circus art, singing, bell ringing, ecology, ornithology…

While developing a local activity around the Turbine mill in Saône-et-Loire, Ensemble Artifices regularly performs in many unusual, natural venues, such as regional parks, or museum gardens. It has also been invited to appear at major festivals: La Folle Journée in Nantes, Via Aeterna, the Midsummer festival at the château d’Hardelot, Ambronay, the Cité de la Voix in Vézelay and many other sites, venturing as far as the Botanical Gardens in Singapore.

As well as creating and touring concerts and shows, Ensemble Artifices devises various actions of communication aimed at different audiences: concerts and shows for all ages or adapted for children, music lectures, presentations in schools, musical walks or else record and record-book publishing. The musicians of Ensemble Artifices also visit hospital patients and residents of nursing homes, with a programme devised in partnership with the “Artists in Hospitals” foundation.