There is something fitting about meeting Benjamin Alunni at Villa Albertine in New York City, where Friends of Fondation de France holds our office. It is a meeting point between two countries, two languages, and two traditions of thinking about art that have often inspired one another. It also reflects something essential about who he is and how he works. Alunni is a tenor, a researcher, a nonprofit founder, and, since April 2026, a Villa Albertine resident. The cultural program of the French Embassy in the United States, Villa Albertine supports artists and researchers through residencies across the country. We sat down with him here to talk about his residency project, his nonprofit Chant de Linos, and the thread that runs through all of it: music as a way of bringing people, ideas, and cultures together around questions, and relationships, that matter.
A Project Born in New York
Alunni’s residency project asks a question that brings a new dimension to a decades-long health battle: how does singing support the well-being and resilience of people living with HIV? The project, which he plans to elaborate into a creation for voice, electronics, and the body, is rooted in field research conducted across New York City, a place he describes as uniquely suited to the inquiry. “New York City is both a major hub for artistic creation and a city deeply marked by the history of HIV,” he explains. “It seemed only natural that this was where I wanted to undertake my residency.”
It also holds a personal connection. “I first came to the United States at the age of 17 to spend the summer with a host family, who became my own family. I was in New York exactly one month before 9/11. I feel a deep connection to this country and to Franco-American relations, particularly through history, culture and the arts. The Villa Albertine residency offers me the chance to bring all these facets of my life together.”
The work is structured around three axes: archival research, the gathering of personal testimonies, and experimental musical collaboration at Columbia University’s Computer Music Center, where his co-composer Omer Barash is completing his PhD. The collaboration with Omer Barsah began in 2023, when they worked together to debut a series of sung texts discovered in the Cairo Geniza at the French Institute for scientific research and music creation (IRCAM).
The testimonies Alunni has collected are already shaping the emotional landscape of the piece. One encounter in particular has stayed with him: a man in his sixties, HIV-positive for thirty years, who had been singing for twenty. “My questions led him to reflect on his life from a new perspective and on the role that singing has played in his life for decades,” Alunni recalls. “Later, he told me, ‘I’m still thinking about our conversation because it’s stirred my thoughts and the way I look at my life.’ I’m moved by this myself. This conversation is like a gift of life.”
The project also carries a broader artistic ambition. “I realise that no one has addressed the questions I am raising,” he says, “even though they have been very much present in dance and the visual arts since the 1980s. When I realized that only one opera and very few musical works deal with illness— and in particular HIV — I thought there was something worth exploring.” New York, with its irreducible energy of convergence — of disciplines, of communities, of stories — has been the right place to begin.
Chant de Linos: Research as a Form of Listening
Long before this residency, Alunni had been developing a practice that combines artistic and intellectual curiosity with musical performance through Chant de Linos, the nonprofit he founded to house these ambitious projects. “Ever since I started out in music,” he explains, “I have been fortunate enough to meet people who combine a research-based approach with artistic creation.” That unique model blending intellectual inquiry in service of artistic and human connection has defined the projects Chant de Linos has undertaken.
The organization’s first major project, Confluences, grew out of Alunni’s research into the mutual influences between French and Jewish musical traditions — asking why composers like Ravel, who was not Jewish, had written music so deeply shaped by Jewish culture. What began as an academic question became a double album of previously unreleased works, supported by the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah and the Rothschild Institute.
From there, Chant de Linos supported several intriguing creations and collaborations, including Anochecer en España, a journey from France to Argentina via Spain and across the Atlantic set to music for voice and piano in collaboration with Fernando Palomeque for; Zylan ne chantera plus, a chamber opera about homophobia produced with the Opéra de Lyon and performed around twenty times for young audiences; Strange Land, a poetic oratorio premiered at the Théâtre de la Ville in Luxembourg and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, paired with workshops for young musicians; and most recently, supported the premiere of a new concerto, Chemot, by composer François Meïmoun in Mexico City, with a new work for voice and string quartet to follow in Paris.
“I am personally moved when I witness the coming together of intellectual inquiry and artistic creation,” Alunni says. “The most important thing in the performing arts is the impact the work has on the audience.” What makes Chant de Linos distinctive is not simply that it commissions new music, but that each project begins with a question — about memory, about culture, about human experiences — and follows that question wherever it leads.
An Invitation to the Salon
The Franco-American thread has been present in Alunni’s work from the beginning. “I first came to the United States at the age of 17,” he reflects, “and I feel a deep connection to this country and to Franco-American relations, particularly through history, culture and the arts.” That connection found one of its most personal expressions in A Musical Salon — a Franco-American song program centered on the art song repertoire that bridges France and the United States, developed with pianist and conductor Fernando Palomeque and music historian Vincent Giroud.
Between 2022 and today, Alunni and Palomeque have performed A Musical Salon eleven times across the United States, including Georgetown University, the Maison Française at the Embassy in Washington, D.C., the French Heritage Society, and Opus One in Napa Valley. The format is deliberately intimate, conceived in the spirit of the private salons where this repertoire was born, and crafted entirely around each host and occasion. “I also like to find out about the hosts’ musical tastes when it comes to a private concert,” Alunni explains. “The encounters this project has facilitated have been among the most powerful experiences I’ve had in the United States, proving that music is a space for connection, for listening to one another, and for beauty that can be renewed.”
As French-American friendship celebrates it’s 250th anniversary, Alunni reflects on his roots, and how these salons, which he seeks to continue offering to music patrons and cultural hosts, are a continuation of his story. Alunni started out in music in the town of Grasse, which is not only the world capital of perfume, but also the home town of Marshal de Grasse, a key figure in the history of American independence alongside the Marquis de Lafayette. “Perhaps that has had an effect on my karma. Who knows?” he shares. “To continue forging links between France and the United States through culture–I feel a desire within me to contribute to this.”
Whether in a private home, a gallery, a university, or an institution, each performance is tailored to its context and its audience. To learn more about hosting a Musical Salon, interested patrons may reach out directly to Benjamin Alunni.
Stay Informed and Support Chant de Linos
Alunni’s Villa Albertine residency officially concluded on June 30th, but the work it has set in motion is only beginning. A short film documenting the residency was recently produced, and will be shared by Alunni soon. A French-language podcast about the residency, directed and edited by Léone Sutter, is also set to be released shortly.
Beyond the project, Alunni continues to further Chant de Linos as a creative force for forging connections and exploring thought provoking questions. Through Friends of Fondation de France, U.S.-based donors can make tax-deductible contributions in support of Chant de Linos’s concerts, commissions, and research-creation projects. To learn more, visit the Chant de Linos page on our website.
