La Roza Enflorese has been interpreting the Sephardic monodic repertoire since 2000. These songs, originating in an oral tradition, offer numerous interpretative possibilities.

Made up of musicians with a range of different backgrounds (classical, jazz, pop, world…), the ensemble presents the songs as an encounter between early music, traditional music and today’s music, drawing on instrumental techniques inspired by different kinds of popular music as much as on improvisation.

Aiming to create a varied and contrasting sound-world, La Roza Enflorese brings together instruments from different places and periods (vieles, viols, lute, vihuela, recorders, crumhorns, and percussion from the Near and Middle East). While this instrumental richness contrasts with the Sephardic tradition, in which songs were performed by a female singer accompanied at most by a frame drum, it nonetheless exemplifies the influences which enriched this tradition after the 1492 diaspora. This approach seems especially appropriate at a time when cultural boundaries are being erased (at least through the arts) and when culture is becoming more and more a matter of encounters.

The ensemble performs regularly both in Belgium (Brussels Palais des Beaux-Arts, Flagey, Namur Philharmonic, Bruges Concertgebouw, Festival van Vlanderen, Festival de Wallonie) and abroad, notably in France (Ile-de France Festival, Pontoise Baroque Festival, Les Coréades, Promenades du Pays d’Auge, Scène Nationale de Poitiers), the Netherlands (Holland Festival), Luxembourg, Switzerland, Slovakia, Peru, Morocco (Fez Festival) and Canada.

Over time, this oral tradition was enriched by contact with other cultures. By this means a single corpus underwent different developments which gave rise to two independent traditions. One, in the East, was centred upon the communities settled in the former Ottoman Empire; the other, in the West, represented by the communities established in the Maghreb and in European countries.