SOLOIST - RECORDING ARTIST - Composer - ARRANGER - Artistic Director
PRESIDENT - LA TRAVERSIÈRE - L'association française de la flûte
All 14K Custom, INLINE G, C foot
Franck Masquelier is a French flutist, artistic director, and composer whose wide-ranging career spans solo performance, chamber music, recording, and artistic leadership. He now devotes a large part of his time to developing his own artistic projects, sharing his vitality notably within the Aria Quintet of Paris, the Furioso, Granada, and Panama Trios, and the Ensemble Laborintus, ensembles of which he is a founding member.
Born in Paris, he graduated with a unanimous Gold Medal in Flute and a Prize of Excellence from the Rueil-Malmaison Regional Conservatory. He also received a Prize for Advanced Studies from the Saint-Maur Regional Conservatory before entering the Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels, where he earned the Higher Diploma (First Prizes in Flute and Chamber Music). He then pursued advanced studies at the Freiburg University of Music (Germany) with the English flautist William Bennett. He is also a laureate of the 2nd Prize at the Illzach International Chamber Music Competition (France), joint 1st Prize at the Martigny International Competition (Switzerland), and a laureate of the Cziffra and Menuhin Foundations.
He has participated in numerous orchestral concerts, including with the Belgian National Orchestra, the European Symphony Orchestra, the Pasdeloup Orchestra, the Avignon-Provence Lyric Symphony Orchestra, the Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra, the International Philharmonic Orchestra, the Le Mans Symphony Orchestra, and Ensemble Ars Nova, among others, under the baton of prestigious conductors. He has performed with diverse ensembles at major festivals and in prestigious concert halls (Salle Gaveau, Chopin-Pleyel, La Cité de la Musique), as well as in more unusual venues (galleries, castles, natural sites) or those dedicated to improvised music, and has taken part in international tours (Germany, Argentina, Belgium, United Arab Emirates, Spain, Italy, Lebanon, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, Turkey, and Yugoslavia).
Alongside his ensemble work, he has performed in duo with organists Eric Lebrun, Pierre Cambourian, and Frédéric Denis, as well as with harpists Hélène Breschand, Delphine Benhamou, Isabelle Frouvelle, and Iole Cerri (Italy). He has also appeared in chamber music with Vadim Tchijik, Jane Peters, Bathyle Goldstein, Suzanne Marie (violins), Pierre-Henri Xuereb, Frédéric Carrière, Maud Gastinel (viola), Eric Courrèges, Henri Demarquette, Xavier Philips, Fabrice Loyal, Astrig Siranossian (cello), Patrick Messina (clarinet), Marielle Nordmann (harp), and Daniela Mizzi, Jasmina Kulaglich, Claire Foison, Christophe Maynard, and Isabelle Poulain (piano).
His eclecticism has led him, as a soloist and with Ensemble Laborintus, to inspire numerous composers whose works he has premiered and recorded. His discography includes more than fifteen recordings with his ensembles, widely praised by critics and the specialist press. The album devoted to the works of François Rossé received 9/10 in Répertoire and 5 Diapasons. His latest album, dedicated to Mozart in duo with Marc Grauwels, was released on the Calliope/Indesens label in 2023. He has also recorded for France Musique, Radio Suisse Romande, and RTBF.
For many years he has also been active as an arranger and composer. His catalogue includes nearly eighty works for a wide variety of ensembles, from solo to orchestral, as well as more than five hundred arrangements and orchestrations, with around one hundred publications available (Lemoine, Da Camera, Sempre Piu, Pierre Lafitan, I.M.D, and François Dhalmann).
He is the artistic director of the Musiques en Vercors Festival (Isère) and the Villard-de-Lans Summer Music Academy, which he founded in 1991, and of the Les Baladines Automnales Festival since 2018. Since January 2018, he has also been President of Traversières – Association Française de la Flûte, which publishes a magazine and organises events including the International Flute Convention in Paris.
Franck plays a Haynes 14K gold flute and is proud to be a Haynes Artist.