Les Violons du Roy & Bernard Labadie
Biographie Les Violons du Roy & Bernard Labadie
Les Violons du Roy
The chamber orchestra Les Violons du Roy takes its name from the renowned string orchestra of the court of the French kings. The group, which has a core membership of fifteen players, was brought together in 1984 by founding conductor Bernard Labadie and specializes in the vast repertoire of music for chamber orchestra, performed in the stylistic manner most appropriate to each era. Although the ensemble plays on modern instruments, its approach to the works of the Baroque and Classical periods has been strongly influenced by current research into performance practice in the 17th and 18th centuries; in this repertoire Les Violons du Roy uses copies of period bows. The orchestra also regularly delves into the repertoire of the 19th and 20th centuries, as witnessed by its recordings of works by Piazzolla, Bartók, and Britten.
Les Violons du Roy is at the heart of the music scene in Québec City, where it has been in residence at the Palais Montcalm since 2007. Since 1997, it has also been an important part of Montreal’s cultural scene. The orchestra is well known throughout Canada thanks to numerous concerts and recordings broadcast by Société Radio-Canada and the CBC and its regular presence at music festivals. Les Violons du Roy has given dozens of performances in Austria, Belgium, Ecuador, England, France, Germany, Israel, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, and United States, among others in the company of such renowned soloists as Magdalena Kožená, David Daniels, Vivica Genaux, and Alexandre Tharaud, including two guest appearances at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw. A recent highlight in the ensemble’s history was its acclaimed performance at the Berlin Philharmonie with Magdalena Kožená during its January 2014 European tour, which also included stops in London, Brussels, and Paris.
Since its first performance in Washington in 1995, Les Violons du Roy has extended its performance network in the United States and now makes regular stops in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. The orchestra is heard frequently on NPR in the United States and is now represented by Opus 3 Artists. A recent high point was the performances in 2009 of Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with La Chapelle de Québec at Carnegie Hall in New York and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. They returned to Carnegie Hall to present Bach’s St. John’s Passion in 2012 and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in 2015. The concerts received very positive reviews, in particular from The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. The orchestra also toured the United States in 2012 with flute player Emmanual Pahud, in 2013 with mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe, and in 2015 with pianist Marc-André Hamelin.
The thirty recordings made by Les Violons du Roy have been acclaimed by critics and earned many distinctions and awards at the national and international levels. Of twelve CDs released by Dorian, two won Juno Awards (Apollo e Dafne (Handel) and Requiem (Mozart)). Since 2004, the association with the Québec label ATMA has led to ten CDs, including Water Music, winner of a Félix Award in 2008; Piazzolla, conducted by Jean-Marie Zeitouni and winner of a Juno Award in 2006; Mozart, Opera and Concert Arias with soprano Karina Gauvin released in March 2014, and La Cigale et Les Violons with Catherine Perrin, released in September 2014. The group’s first collaboration with the multinational Virgin Classics label led to the release in fall 2006 of a CD of cantata arias by Handel and Hasse with US mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux. Two other Virgin Classics released in 2011 feature C.P.E. Bach’s cello concertos with the Norwegian cellist Truls Mørk and J.S. Bach’s keyboard concertos with the French pianist Alexandre Tharaud. A recording of opera arias by Mozart, Haydn, Gluck, and Graun with contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux was launched in 2012 under the Naïve label, followed by a Hyperion recording of Haydn concertos with pianist Marc-André Hamelin in March 2013. Two recordings appeared in October 2013: one on Analekta with harpist Valérie Milot in works for harp and orchestra and the other produced together with Diane Dufresne. Their most recent CDs are Alexandre Tharaud, Mozart, Haydn, Jeunehomme (Erato) released in September 2014, and Fratres (ATMA) released in April 2015.
Mathieu Lussier
The accomplished and multifaceted Mathieu Lussier is a long-time friend and collaborator of Les Violons du Roy and of its founding conductor Bernard Labadie. As associate conductor of the internationally renowned chamber orchestra based in Quebec City, he has led the ensemble in more than 75 concerts throughout Canada, Mexico, and the United States. In recent years he has carved out a reputation as an important new voice from the podium specializing in Baroque and Classical repertoire as well as the great neglected works of 19th-century France. His first recording at the head of Les Violons du Roy appeared in September 2014, and he received in 2015 the Jean-Marie Beaudet Award in Orchestra Conducting from the Canada Council for the Arts.
From 2008 to 2014 Mathieu was artistic director of the Lamèque International Baroque Music Festival, where he conducted major choral and orchestral works by Vivaldi, Zelenka, and Handel. Critics have praised his high-energy performances and keen sense of detail, while his explorations of a large, diverse repertoire have garnered much attention, from his no-holds-barred rendering of Milhaud’s Le Bœuf sur le toit with Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal at Festival de Lanaudière to a widely hailed production of the opera Zémire et Azor with staging by Denys Arcand. He made his conducting debut on fall 2015 at the head of Orchestre symphonique de Montréal as well as with Orchestre symphonique de Trois-Rivières.
Mathieu Lussier is also active as a soloist and for close to 20 years has been tirelessly and passionately introducing audiences to the modern and baroque bassoon all over North America and Europe. He has appeared as a soloist with such ensembles as Les Violons du Roy, Montreal’s Arion Baroque Orchestra, Toronto’s Tafelmusik, the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, and Apollo’s Fire of Cleveland. He continues to pursue a career in chamber music with Ensemble Pentaèdre in Montreal and in summer 2014 was appointed assistant professor at Université de Montréal. His many solo recordings cover close to a dozen bassoon concertos including those of Vivaldi, Fasch, Graupner, Telemann, and Corrette. He has also recorded a disc of Boismortier’s bassoon sonatas, three of solo bassoon works by François Devienne, and two of wind music by Gossec and Méhul.
Mathieu Lussier is also a composer, with a catalogue of more than 40 works heard regularly in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. In August 2009 the bassoon and strings version of his Bassango received 3rd prize for “Contemporary Classical Song” at the Just Plain Folks Music Awards in Nashville, Tennessee. Artists such as Nadina Mackie Jackson, Guy Few, Lise Beauchamp, and George Zukerman have commissioned works from him, as have such ensembles as the American Wind Symphony Orchestra, the Oshawa-Durham Symphony Orchestra, Tafelmusik, and Les Idées Heureuses. His music has been the object of numerous recordings and been broadcast throughout the world. His 2001 wind quintet Dos Tropicos has been performed close to 100 times in Canada, Europe and the United Kingdom. His works are published in the U.S. by TrevCo Music, in Germany by Accolade, in the UK by June Emerson, and in France by Gérard Billaudot.
