Sylvain Sartre is a significant figure on the French early music scene, active as both a flutist and an ensemble director. He is a co-founder of the ensemble Les Ombres and serves as its co-artistic director. Sartre was born on August 28, 1979, and grew up in Perpignan, France. He took up the piano as a small child, and at age five, he was admitted to the Perpignan Conservatory. He added transverse flute to his studies at 12, and when he was 15, he became interested in early music repertory and enrolled for Baroque flute classes with Philippe Allain-Dupré at the Conservatoire de Toulouse (CRR). After learning to play various types of early flutes, he gave his first concerts with the ensemble Les Versets. Sartre then enrolled at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland, for further study. He earned a bachelor's degree in 2008, with Oskar Peter and Anne Smith as his principal teachers, and went on for a master's, studying with Annie Ploquin-Rignol, Philippe Allain-Dupré, and then Marc Hantaï, receiving his degree in 2010 after submitting a thesis on the French cantata. While at the Schola Cantorum, Sartre and a classmate, viola da gamba player Margaux Blanchard, founded the ensemble Les Ombres in 2006. The group experienced early success, taking second prize at the International Competition for Early Music in Trossingen, Germany, in 2009. Les Ombres released a recording of François Couperin's Les Nations on the Ambronay label in 2012. Sartre has remained active as a flutist beyond his work with Les Ombres. He has performed under conductors Hervé Niquet, Leonardo Garcia Alarcón (with whom he performed on an Ambronay album devoted to composer Barbara Strozzi), and Thilo Hirsch. Much of the repertory performed and recorded by Les Ombres is new and has been unearthed by Sartre's own research. He often writes booklet notes for Les Ombres' releases, and he has continued to record with that group, both as flutist and conductor. In the former capacity, he was heard on the 2022 Les Ombres release Bach-Abel Society, and as a conductor, he backed violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte that year on an album of violin concertos by Leclair, Vivaldi, and Locatelli. ~ James Manheim, Rovi