Bernard Labadie
Biography Bernard Labadie
Les Violons du Roy
takes its name from the celebrated court orchestra of the French kings. It was founded in 1984 by Bernard Labadie, now styled founding conductor, and continues under music director Jonathan Cohen to explore the nearly boundless repertoire of music for chamber orchestra in performances matched as closely as possible to the period of each work’s composition. Its minimum fifteen-member complement plays modern instruments, albeit with period bows for Baroque and Classical music, and its interpretations are deeply informed by the latest research on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century performance practice. The repertoire of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries receives similar attention and figures regularly on the orchestra’s programs.
Les Violons du Roy has been a focal point of Québec City’s musical life since it was founded in 1984, and in 1997 it reached out to enrich the cultural landscape of Montréal as well. In 2007, the orchestra moved into its permanent home base in Québec City’s Palais Montcalm while continuing to build on the worldwide reputation it has acquired in countless concerts and recordings carried by medici.tv, Radio-Canada, CBC, and NPR along with regular appearances on the festival circuit. Les Violons du Roy has performed dozens of times throughout Canada as well as in Germany, the U.K., Austria, Belgium, Brazil, China, Colombia, Ecuador, South Korea, Spain, the United States, France, Israel, Morocco, Mexico, Norway, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Switzerland, in collaboration with such world-renowned soloists as Magdalena Kožená (2006 and 2014), David Daniels (2001 and 2004), Vivica Genaux (2007), Alexandre Tharaud (2011, 2014, and 2016), Ian Bostridge (2011), Emmanuel Pahud (2012), Stephanie Blythe (2013), Marc-André Hamelin (2015 and 2019), Philippe Jaroussky (2017), Anthony Marwood (2017), Isabelle Faust (2018), Julia Lezhneva (2018) and Anthony Roth Costanzo (2018). The orchestra has performed at the Berlin Philharmonie and iconic venues in London, Paris, and Brussels, with two performances on invitation at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.
Since Les Violons du Roy’s first trip to Washington, D.C., in 1995, its U.S. travels have been enriched with numerous and regular stops in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Its ten appearances at Carnegie Hall include five with La Chapelle de Québec featuring the Messiah, the Christmas Oratorio, and the St. John Passion under Bernard Labadie, founder and music director of the choir, and another featuring Dido and Aeneas under Richard Egarr. Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles has hosted the orchestra three times, once with La Chapelle de Québec in the Messiah, again under Bernard Labadie. Les Violons du Roy is represented by Opus 3 Artists and Askonas Holt.
The thirty-six recordings released thus far by Les Violons du Roy have been met with widespread critical acclaim. The twelve released on the Dorian label include Juno Award–winning recordings of Mozart’s Requiem with La Chapelle de Québec and of Handel’s Apollo e Dafne with soprano Karina Gauvin. A dozen more have appeared through a partnership between Les Violons du Roy and Quebec’s ATMA label, including 2008 Félix Award winner Water Music, 2006 Juno Award winner Piazzolla with conductor Jean-Marie Zeitouni, and three releases under the baton of Mathieu Lussier including a CD of Vivaldi violin concertos and another of Mozart’s horn concertos. Further recordings on Erato, Naïve, Hyperion, Analekta, and Decca Gold include mezzo Vivica Genaux with arias by Handel and Hasse; C.P.E. Bach’s cello concertos with Truls Mørk; Marie-Nicole Lemieux performing opera arias by Mozart, Haydn, Gluck, and Graun; Bach and Mozart piano concertos with Alexandre Tharaud; Haydn piano concertos with Marc-André Hamelin; arias by Handel, Philip Glass with Anthony Roth Costanzo (nominated for a Grammy Award 2019); Mozart’s Concertos for piano Nos. 22 &24 with Charles Richard-Hamelin; and albums with soloists Valérie Milot and Diane Dufresne.
Bernard Labadie
an internationally recognized specialist in 17th-, 18th-, and early 19th century repertoire, is the founding conductor of Les Violons du Roy. He was the ensemble’s music director from 1984 to 2014 and remains the music director of La Chapelle de Québec choir, which he founded in 1985. He has toured Europe and the Americas as the head of both ensembles, performing with them at some of the world’s greatest concert halls and festivals: Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Kennedy Center in Washington, the Barbican in London, the Berlin Philharmonie, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, and the Salzburg, Bergen, Rheingau, and Schleswig Holstein festivals. In the spring of 2018 he leads Les Violons du Roy on a U.S., Mexico, and Colombia tour featuring violinist Isabelle Faust and soprano Julia Lezhneva.
In 2017 Bernard Labadie was named principal conductor of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in New York, beginning with the 2018–2019 season. As such, he will conduct the orchestra’s annual concert series at Carnegie Hall. In great demand as a guest conductor, Maestro Labadie makes frequent appearances with major North American and European orchestras. In the 2017–2018 season alone, his engagements include the Cleveland and Minnesota orchestras; the Pittsburgh, Saint-Louis, Baltimore, and Toronto symphony orchestras; the radio orchestras of Frankfurt, Finland (Helsinki), and Berlin; the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra, Lyon National Orchestra, and the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa. Since the start of his international career in the late 1990s, he has also made appearances with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich, the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, the Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, and Atlanta orchestras, the New World Symphony Orchestra in Miami Beach, and Orchestre symphonique de Montréal.
Bernard Labadie is very active in the world of period orchestras. He made his conducting début with Berlin’s Akademie für alte Musik in November 2017 and has also led the Academy of Ancient Music, The English Concert, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Collegium Vocale Gent, the Handel and Haydn Society orchestra in Boston, and Montreal’s Ensemble Arion.
At the opera, Bernard Labadie served as artistic director of Opéra de Québec from 1994 to 2003 and as artistic director of Opéra de Montréal from 2002 to 2006. He has also appeared as guest conductor with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Santa Fe Opera, Cincinnati Opera, and at Glimmerglass.
Bernard Labadie has recorded some twenty albums for Virgin Classics (Erato), EMI, Dorian, ATMA, Hyperion, and Naïve, both as a guest conductor and with Les Violons du Roy. Two new releases, with the SWR Freiburg Symphony Orchestra and with Berlin’s Akademie für Alte Musik, are due out in 2018.
A tireless ambassador for music in his hometown of Québec City, Bernard Labadie was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2005 and a Knight of the Ordre national du Québec in 2006. In 2008 he received the Banff Centre’s National Arts Award for his contribution to the development of the arts in Canada and an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Université Laval. In 2016 Bernard Labadie received the Samuel de Champlain award in Paris and was made a Compagnon des arts et des lettres du Québec for his contribution to the arts in Quebec society. He received an honorary doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music in New York City and the Medal of the National Assembly of Quebec in 2018.
