Augustin Viard

He launched his career as a soloist and chamber musician with Ensemble Vecteur Ondes and Ensemble Volta.[3][4][13][14]

He played the ondes Martenot part of Ecuatorial by Edgard Varèse in Paris with the Ensemble Intercontemporain in 2012, under Susanna Mälkki.[15] In 2015 he performed Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher by Arthur Honegger in Utrecht (Netherlands) with Het Promenade Orkest under Jos Vermunt.[16] He has also given performances of this piece in Osnabrück (Germany) in 2017 with the Osnabrücker Symphonieorchester under Andreas Hotz,[2] in Mexico city in 2018 with the Orquesta Filarmónica de la UNAM under Sylvain Gasançon,[2] and in Katowice (Poland) in 2019 with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alexander Liebreich.[17] The same year, he performed the piece again with Marion Cotillard in the lead role, with the Orchestre National de Lille, conducted by Alexander Bloch, at the George Enescu Festival in Budapest (Romania).

In 2014, he released his debut album Les nuages de Magellan in collaboration with Ensemble Volta.[14][18] This included all the chamber music pieces for ondes Martenot composed by Tristan Murail.[14] This recording won the Grand Prix du Président de la République de l'Académie Charles Cros 2014, an honour awarded by the French president François Hollande.[19][20]

Since 2016, French public radio station France Culture regularly commissions Viard to compose and perform original pieces for broadcast.[6][7][8][21]

In 2017 he played Ondes Martenot on the award-winning soundtrack of the international film Loveless.[5] This film received the Prix du Jury du Festival de Cannes 2017[22] and the César du meilleur film étranger (best foreign film) 2018.[23] The composers Evgueni and Sacha Galperine won the Best Composer European Film Awards 2017.[24]

In 2018, he composed the original music for the audio cinema film Le brasier Shelley with Warren Ellis,[25] starring Gaspard Ulliel, Warren Ellis and Marianne Faithfull.[25][26] This film was selected for the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma of Montréal competition 2018.[27]

In 2019, he performed all the Ondes Martenot parts on Nick Cave's album Ghosteen.[28][29] The album achieved number 4 in the main UK charts[30] and reached top 10 positions in 15 European countries.[31]