She was already a well-known young traditional singer – an art she had been learning by ear, from her peers and elders and listening to Dastum‘s vast collections of field recordings – when she took her first lessons in classical singing, even as her Breton fest-noz band Loened Fall was starting out. What began as sheer curiosity developped into a full « double life », bringing her to sing opera, lieder and Breton music in the same week and quite often in the same day. Thirty years later, Loened Fall is still thriving, as is her collaboration with Gildas Pungier’s Mélisme(s) chamber choir, both as a classical mezzo and as a Breton singer. ‘What one music values can be what another despises’, she says, ‘but that’s what makes it so fascinating. Languages can be so different, yet the need to speak is the same. Once you understand that, you are free to notice everything that musics – that is, musicians – can share or learn from each other.’ Her appetite for experiments and discovery has led her to sing – either for one night or for years – with musicians from Jordan, Guinea, Northern Africa, Japan, Ireland, the U.K., Belgium, Galicia, and artists of different backgrounds such as jazz, rock, contemporary music, theater, or dance. (In her late teens and early twenties she also worked as an actress and a Breton-language TV presenter.)

with Ronan Guéblez in a fest-noz in Poullaouen (photograph by Eric Legret / Dañs-Tro)

Her love of Breton traditional solo a cappella singing, however, is stronger than ever, and she performs regularly solo or with her longtime friend Nolùen Le Buhé; their A Vor da Vor concerts are designed to introduce new audiences to oral tradition, with one show written especially for children. In the previous decade they also worked in trio with singer Annie Ebrel, experimenting with « horizontal polyphony » as a way to shine a new light on the riches of monody.

Storytelling has become another staple of her work, most recently in solos A Castle of Stone and Sea / Maryvonne La Grande and Les Fantômes sont des choses qui arrivent (« Ghosts Happen »), in Mélisme(s)’s Les Lavandières de la Nuit and La Légende de Sainte Brigitte, and in the deeply-researched historical shows of La Filandière (Emmanelle Huteau, Olivier Depoix). She is also interested in traditional fairytales and often incorporates one in her recitals to complement the dramatic and reality-based stories sung within her favorite gwerzioù.

performing Maryonne La Grande (A Castle of Stone and Sea) in Corsica – photograph by Silvio Siciliano

She also sings in concert with musicians: in duos with composers Philippe Ollivier, (bandoneon) or Baptiste Boiron (sax, clarinet); in international project Yule, in which Didier Laloy and Pascal Chardome invited her and Uxía, Joanne McIver, Liam Ó Maonlaí and Damien Chierici. For two decades she sang with pianist Lydia Domancich in a number of different projects, and with guitarist Gilles Le Bigot and flutist Jean-Michel Veillon both as a trio and within Le Bigot’s Empreintes band (she wrote « An Distro », a favorite for many lovers of Breton music, to a tune by Le Bigot). Other past collaborations include Eric Le Lann, Gaby Kerdoncuff, and several productions with the Bagad Kemper, one of the leading pipe-bands in Brittany.

with Philippe Ollivier in Bugel Koar, photograph by Eric Legret

She has recently taken up live-looping, using Philippe Ollivier’s Logelloop in her solo Our Bedtime Near  (based on the opening poem of Through the Looking Glass).

An ideal guest for cross-over productions, she has collaborated with the Orchestre National de Bretagne on several projects, ranging from Bach en Breizh in 2012 with Mélisme(s) – in which she sang both a cappella in Breton and alto arias from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio – to creations by contemporary composers : Katia Makdissi-Warren (Chorus Nunavik Breizh, created in Montreal and in Rennes in 2023, reprised in Rimouski in 2026, with Nolùen Le Buhé and inuit throat singers Lydia Etok and Nina Segalowitz), Frédérique Lory (several works including Avel Viz, a « winter journey » into the darker depths of Breton folk songs in a dialogue with Schubert’s Winterreise), and more. Medieval music ensemble Diabolus in Musica invited her first to explore trouvères songs, then to create Thierry Machuel’s Notre Dame des Flammes (reprised in Notre-Dame de Paris in 2025). In Spring Equinox, by gambist and singer Romina Lischka, her voice meets that of sean-nós singer Doimnic Mac Giolla Bhríde. In La Reine naufragée, Ayumi Nakagawa and Patrick Wibart interweave early Baroque music and her Breton singing to evoke Queen Henrietta Maria’s dramatic escape to France via Brittany during the English Civil War.

with Lydia Etok, Nolùen Le Buhé, and Nina Segalowitz behind the camera, backstage before the creation of Katia Makdissi Warren’s Chorus Nunavik Breizh

Marthe Vassallo is also well-known for her writing : songs, articles, essays, posts. In her book + CD Les Chants du Livre Bleu (2016), she explored a 1913 collection of Breton folk tunes, sharing her experience of interpreting those scores and her research about Maurice Duhamel, the little-known musician who had noted them down. She initiated and edited a series of interviews with 1930-born kan ha diskan singer Marcel Le Guilloux, who taught countless singers including her 18-year-old self and who, being partially-sighted, could not write his own life story; the resulting book, complete with a collection of Le Guilloux’s repertoire of lyrics put together by singers Yves and Nanda Le Troadec, was published by Dastum in 2019.

Though performing and writing are by far her main activities, teaching is another lifelong interest of hers, a natural extension of the chain of transmission of Breton music and of her desire to introduce all sorts of audiences to it: classes for pre-professional students in conservatories, workshops in French and English, informal meetings with young musicians, etc. She occasionally coaches artists, teaches vocal technique, and is invited to speak at conferences. She often takes part in Dastum’s publications of field recordings. ‘Breton music got where it is today thanks to the generosity of thousands of singers and collectors’, she says, ‘it’s only natural to try and give something in return – and, to tell the truth, it’s always a wonderful opportunity to study and learn even more!’

performing « Les fantômes sont des choses qui arrivent » – photograph by Charles Vassallo

Discography / bibliography

• Gwerzioù et chants de haute-voix (1993), F3 Ouest.
• Loened Fall, An deizioù zo berr (1998), AN NAER Productions (Prix « Produit en Bretagne » 99 du meilleur disque de musique traditionnelle).
• Bugel Koar, Ar Solier, (2000), AN NAER. (fff dans Télérama, quatre étoiles dans Le Monde de la Musique, Grand prix du disque « produit en Bretagne » 2001)
• Skaliero, Beg ar Viñs (2001), Keltia.
• Bagad Kemper, Azeliz Iza, live (2001), Keltia (fff dans Télérama, prix spécial « Produit en Bretagne » 2001).
• Gilles Le Bigot, Empreintes (2002), Keltia.
• Loened Fall, Gouez ! (A l’état sauvage) (2003), AN NAER .
• Bugel Koar, Nebaon ! (2004), AN NAER / distr Harmonia Mundi (quatre étoiles dans Le Monde de la Musique, « Bravo ! » de Trad Mag)
• Eric Le Lann, Origines (2005), HB prod/Universal. (ffff dans Télérama)
• Les Allumés du Jazz (compilation), titre Room 13 en duo avec Lydia Domancich, 2005.
• Gaby Kerdoncuff, La Coopérative (2007), Hirustica.
• Loened Fall, Diwar logodenn ’vez ket razh (2008), AN NAER.
• Annie Ebrel, Nolùen Le Buhé, Marthe Vassallo, André Markowicz, Gwerzioù (2009), Théâtre de Cornouaille.
• Bagad Kemper, Live au Cornouaille (2010), Keltia Musique.
• Gilles Le Bigot, Empreintes 2 (2011), Keltia Musique.
• Vertigo et Marthe Vassallo, La Diagonale des Mers (2012), Bemol productions.
• Annie Ebrel, Nolùen Le Buhé, Marthe Vassallo, Teir (2012), coprod. Big Bravo/Loz productions.
• Loened Fall, ‘Vel ba’r gêr (2014), An Naer Produksion.
• Les chants du livre bleu (2015), book+CD, Son an Ero/ Petit Festival. (Coup de Cœur Musiques du Monde 2016 de l’Académie Charles Cros)
• Annie Ebrel, Nolùen Le Buhé, Marthe Vassallo, Paotred (2018), Coop Breizh.
• Book, with Yves et Nanda Le Troadec : Marcel Le Guilloux, chanteur, conteur, paysan du Centre-Bretagne (2019), Dastum/Presses Universitaires de Rennes.
• Loened Fall, Start da lac’ho (2025), Arfolk.