Catherine Zimmer is someone who enjoys straying off the beaten track and exploring terra incognita. She first felt the fascination of keyboards when she was a small child. After studying piano and harpsichord at the conservatoires of Marseilles, Aix-en-Provence and Geneva, where her most influential teacher was - and remains - Pierre Barbizet, she happily flits back and forth between these two keyboard instruments, playing each at different times during her career.
She regularly plays with Early Music ensembles, but also loves to let people hear the harpsichord performing unexpected repertoires, such as Spanish, Corsican and South-American music, or newly-created contemporary music (the Mens Sonoris, Poly-Sons, Poly-Cordes and Salamandre ensembles). She is also invited to perform as a soloist at festivals (Aix-en-Provence, Rieux-Minervois, Les Clavecins de Chartres, etc.), and records works by forgotten composers such as Balbastre, Moreau and Tapray with the Coriolan and L’Encelade labels. These productions have been remarked upon by specialist critics in Europe (Diapason, Classica Répertoire, Early Music, Oxford Journal, etc.), which hail the originality of the programmes, the conviction of orchestral style of playing.
This musicological research work led to her editing the “Les Cahiers du Clavecin” collection, published by the Société de Musicologie du Languedoc, and to a harpsichord textbook published by Van de Velde-Lemoine. Her enthusiasm has also led her to put together a little collection of unusually-made period instruments and to look for the repertoire associated with them. Her dual training as a harpsichordist and pianist means that she can adapt her technique to perform on rare instruments such as Merlin’s 1784 organised pianoforte.
The passing on and sharing of her knowledge are an essential part of her artistic work and inseparable from her musical career. She holds a State diploma as a piano teacher along with the Certificat d'Aptitude as a harpsichord teacher and has taught both instruments at a number of conservatoires (CNR de Marseille, Conservatoire Pierre Barbizet de Marignane, early music department of the CRD Béziers - Méditerranée, then CRD de Corse Henri Tomasi where she set up a harpsichord class in 2006). She has also been an active member of the Clavecin-en-France association for many years, and Clavecin-en-Corse which sets out to make early music heard in Corsica. .