Théotime Langlois de Swarte took up the violin at age four and then entered the Conservatoire Montserrat Caballé in Perpignan. At the unusually early age of nine, he added Baroque violin to his studies, having discovered it in a master class with Patrick Bismuth; he began studies at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional in Toulouse, studying with Gilles Colliard. On a Zaleski Foundation scholarship, he studied with Devy Erlih and Igor Volochine at the École Normale de Musique in Paris, and in 2014, he enrolled at the Conservatoire de Paris. There, his studies were oriented toward modern violin and Romantic music.
It wasn't long before de Swarte attracted the attention of Baroque groups, including the venerable Les Arts Florissants and its leader, William Christie. He joined that group in 2015, and he has performed with Christie in chamber concerts. He has also performed or recorded with other leading Baroque groups, including Ensemble Les Ombres, Les Nouveaux Caractères, and Jupiter. De Swarte has founded two groups of his own, one for Baroque performance (Ensemble Le Consort, with harpsichordist Justin Taylor), and one to explore 19th and 20th century French repertory (the Eluard Trio, with Fiona Mato and Hanna Salzenstein). As a soloist, he has appeared in such major venues as Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles, the Musikverein in Vienna, and the Shanghai National Art Center. De Swarte was signed to the Harmonia Mundi and released his debut album, The Mad Lover, in 2020 with lutenist Thomas Dunford. In 2021, he released a pair of albums, Générations (featuring Christie and including French Baroque violin sonatas) and Proust, Le Concert Retrouvé, representing a concert that might have been played at a salon described by novelist Marcel Proust in The Remembrance of Things Past. ~ James Manheim, Rovi