Jean-Sébastien Dureau and Vincent Planès
met at Indiana University, Bloomington in 1999 and forged a strong artistic bond.

They share the artistic management of an atypical festival they co-founded in 2005 : Festival de Musique de Chambre du Larzac (France) is an annual Summer residency program drawing musicians from all over the world for a series of chamber music concerts. They also explore and perform together the four hand-two piano repertoire, and their distinctive programmes are rooted in their joint interests and approach: Kurtág's Bach transcriptions and Bach's original pieces, a 4-hand rendition of Beethoven's Grande Fugue between Peter Eötvös's Kosmos and George Crumb's Mécaniques Célestes… Each carefully wrought programme reflects a common desire to get a new angle on the different periods of the repertoire.

They have been invited several times by France Musique radio station to perform and comment on their choice of repertoire and explain their innovative approach. They also appear at contemporary music festivals such as Musica (Strasbourg) and Amsterdam Muziekgebouw. They had the privilege of preparing this programme with György and Márta Kurtág, after the composer gave them the last two (at the time) unpublished volumes of Játékok and a set of recent Bach transcriptions.

Jean-Sébastien Dureau
studied music first in his native Lyon, later with Jean-François Heisser, Christian Ivaldi and Alain Planès, at the Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique where he graduated in 1996 with first prizes in piano and chamber music, followed by advanced studies with Géry Moutier at the Lyon CNSM.

In 1998, he moved to the USA to study with renowned Hungarian pianist and teacher György Sebök at the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington. Over the next two years he had opportunities to work with outstanding artists such as János Starker, Reiko Neriki, Franco Gulli and Leonard Hokanson. In 2001, Jean-Sébastien Dureau received the Artist Diploma. A laureate of the Barcelona Maria Casals International Competition, Jean-Sébastien is sponsored by institutional and private partners: French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hewlett Packard Foundation and Mécénat Musical Société Générale.

He is a regular guest at various festivals in France and abroad (Radio-France Montpellier, Steirian Chamber Music Festival in Austria, Festival d'Ile de France) and on radio broadcasts (France Musique, Radio Classique, Deutschland Rundfunk) Jean-Sébastien Dureau also takes a keen interest in chamber music and lieder, in collaboration with several contemporary composers, he has created works by Éric Dartel, Luís Rizo-Salom, Joël Merah and György Kurtág.

Since 2008 he is piano professor at the Geneva Conservatory and he also teaches complementary piano at the Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique.

Vincent Planès
born in 1975, Vincent Planès studied piano in his native town of Annecy, then at the Lyon CNSM, later with Menahem Pressler, founding member and pianist of the Beaux-Arts Trio and professor emeritus at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA. At Bloomington, where he received a Performer Diploma and Master of Music, he had the privilege of accompanying the students of renowned cellist János Starker, a significant personality in his musical development.

Vincent Planès just spent five years preparing his doctoral degree in collaborative piano' at the New England Conservatory, Boston. He was awarded the Presser Music Award, a distinction given each year to one student in each major American music school. He has performed in some of the most prestigious European and North-American concert-halls: Carnegie Hall (New York), Jordan Hall (Boston), Wigmore Hall (London), Kumho Art Hall (Seoul, Korea), Auditorium du Louvre (Paris), Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.) and played with outstanding artists such as cellists Joel Krosnik (Juilliard Quartet) and Ronald Leonard (solo cellist, Los Angeles Phiharmonic Orchestra), flutist Matthieu Dufour (Chicago Symphony Orchestra). He accompanied violist Kim Kashkashian at the Montréal International Viola Congress and toured Florida with violinist Itzhak Perlman. He also accompanies participants in the latter's Perlman Music program, an international programme for training young musicians of special talent. Since 2007, he is professor at the Conservatoire Maurice Ravel, Bayonne, France.