Damien Poisblaud (born 13 April 1961 in Maillé in Vendée) is a French cantor specializing in Gregorian chant. He is the director of the Gregorian choir "Les Chantres du Thoronet".[1]
Damien Poisblaud took interest in gregorian singing in 1980 which he practiced in a choir for more than fifteen years. Alongside his studies in philosophy, he studied art and thought of the Middle Ages.
In 1989, he made a first recording in Thoronet Abbey. In 1991, he created the "Gregorian Choir of the Mediterranean" with which he recorded a Gregorian Requiem which obtained a Diapason d'or in December 1996.[2]
From 1996, he has been singing with Marcel Pérès and the Ensemble Organum. He subsequently followed the teachings of Marie-Noël Colette at the École pratique des hautes études and that of Jean-Yves Hameline[3] on the anthropology of the ritual gesture.
Since 1999, he has been studying the Byzantine Rite following the Greek and Syrian traditions of Aleppo. With the band Les Paraphonistes which he founded in 1998, he undertook to revisit the repertoire of the church French: [[fauxbourdon|fauxbourdons]] of the 18th and 19th centuries. He recorded a record of these French: fauxbourdons of the North of France, a "Solemn Mass of the Dead", which was rewarded by a Diapason d'or in July 2000.
During the year 2000, Damien Poisblaud directed the Codex Calixtinus in several cultural capitals of Europe – Reykjavík, Santiago de Compostela, Kraków,[4] Prague, Helsinki and Bologna – on the occasion of the Festival of the Nine European cities of culture 2000.
Since 2008, he has been singing the Sunday Gregorian Mass at the Thoronet Abbey, at the request of Mgr Dominique Rey, bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fréjus-Toulon.[5]
Damien Poisblaud is married and the father of three.