In celebration of La Scena Musicale’s new online platform mySCENA.org and maSCENA.org, we launched an online raffle for Glenn Gould’s Complete Columbia Discography on 78 CDs. Congratulations to longtime volunteer R. K. Basdeo for winning the box set, valued at over $200! Keep your eyes peeled for other opportunities to win prizes, and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, or sign up for our electronic newsletter by visiting mySCENA.org!
La Scena Musicale has reached a major milestone: its 20th birthday. The gala-concert celebration on November 24 at the Salle Pierre-Mercure of the Centre Pierre-Péladeau was brimming with youthful optimism. Many up-and-coming classical musicians and opera singers animated this event, which was dedicated to the late journalist and author Lucie Renaud, one of La Scena Musicale’s most brilliant collaborators. “We launched La Scena Musicale at a time when the future of classical music seemed uncertain, and our mission was to inform, educate, inspire, and to promote classical music and make it accessible to the public, to tap into the imaginations…
La Scena Musicale celebrates its 20th anniversary with the first edition of Gala LA RELÈVE/RISING STARS, a benefit concert on Thursday, November 24, 2016 at 7:30 PM at Salle Pierre-Mercure of the Centre Pierre-Péladeau featuring some of Canada’s future star musicians, many of whom have won recent national competitions. Soprano Chelsea Rus, baritone Hugo Laporte, clarinetist David Dias da Silva, violinist Joshua Peters, pianist Emily Oulousian and Piano Caméléons will perform; pianist Michael McMahon will accompany the singers. “I’m very excited with our line-up of six young musicians and duo,” said Wah Keung Chan, founder of La Scena Musicale. “Each…
The Canadian Opera Company (COC) held their annual vocal competition, the COC Ensemble Studio Competition, on November 3, 2016 at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto. There were seven contestants this year who participated: sopranos Andrea Lett, Andrea Nunez, Maria Lacey, and Myriam Leblanc, mezzo Simone McIntosh, and baritones Geoffrey Schellenberg and Samuel Chan. There are two parts to the competition, a private part for a small audience of COC donors and members of the media and a public part for anyone who purchased a ticket. The First Prize went to mezzo Simone McIntosh from Vancouver; the Second Prize…
Jean-Michel Dubé is the youngest in a family of five children, four of whom are pianists. At the age of three, he started studying piano at home with his mother who was herself a pianist. At age seven, he entered the Conservatoire de musique de Québec. In 2015, he was awarded the grand prize at the Concours Hélène-Roberge, which allowed him to record, with the help of Espace XXI and Aramusique, the works of André Mathieu. Mathieu’s complete piano works have never been recorded before, making this disc a world premiere. How did you arrive to André Mathieu’s work? The idea…
By popular demand, La Scena Musicale is happy to bring back the Canadians Abroad feature section, where we will keep tabs on your favourite Canucks as they make their mark around the world. If you have any leads about Canadians abroad or wish for us to include a particular artist or ensemble in an upcoming issue, please send an email to [email protected]. Yannick Nézet-Séguin Montreal-born maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin begins the month in Munich guest conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in a program of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2, Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 “Italian,” and Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with…
Valérie Milot defines herself as a musician first and a harpist second. At age 31, she is nothing less than the most visible and active ambassador of the harp that Quebec has seen in recent history. She is the soloist-in-residence for Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain for the 2016–17 season. Music is important in the Milot family. They even play it together. “My father was a great lover of classical music,” she says. “He played several instruments, including classical guitar. We, his three children, took introductory music classes before we even went to school. It was part of our family life: we…
Readers, know this: like all of our issues, the magazine that you hold in your hands is the result of a small miracle produced by a very small team. For twenty years, while many publications have unfortunately shut their doors, or exist now only in digital form, La Scena Musicale stayed the course, despite the well-known issues facing print media, be it readers’ changing habits or lower advertising revenues, among other problems. Each of our issues was the result of the efforts of true enthusiasts, a persistent band of people who devote their time and perseverance so that the classical…
Keri-Lynn Wilson: Congratulations to the marvellous La Scena Musicale for the last twenty years of your extraordinary publication. The musical world is extremely enriched by your passionate reporting on arts in Quebec. Thank you for being an indispensable resource for sharing the musical experience outside of the symphony hall, the opera stage, or the jazz club and for inspiring a new public to participate in current events. With La Scena Musicale, the arts have a future! Bravo! Stéphane Tétreault: It is with great pleasure and pride that I support La Scena Musicale. For two decades, La Scena Musicale provides invaluable…
Last night was the first performance of the OSM’s concert celebrating 50 years of the Montreal metro system, which first welcomed passengers in October 1966. To commemorate the occasion, the OSM and the STM co-commissioned two new works: José Evagelista’s orchestral piece Accelerando, and Robert Normandeau’s electroacoustic work Tunnel Azur. While this concert marks more than one historic premiere – Tunnel Azur is the first electroacoustic piece ever to be commissioned by the OSM and to be presented at the Maison Symphonique (read LSM’s article on the new work here) – the main question on Montreal music lovers’ minds seems to be,…
