Bourgie Hall presents

Transfiguration

with Valérie Milot and Stéphane Tétreault

Transfiguration, starring harpist Valérie Milot and cellist Stéphane Tétreault, is a total concert experience in which its artists are immersed in a digital and cinematographic environment. Audiences will be visually and auditorily captivated by this mise en scène, wherein music is transformed by projected imagery and the dynamics between the two musicians evolve until the final transfiguration.

Artists
Valérie Milot, harp

Valérie Milot is a musician and entrepreneur who walks an unconventional career path. Championing her instrument into the spotlight, she reinvents the harp and its clichés, putting forth its powerful sound and astonishing colours.

A sought-after soloist, Valérie regularly performs a rich solo repertoire with prestigious orchestras (Les Violons du Roy, Orchestre symphonique de Québec, Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal) and with reputed conductors (Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Bernard Labadie, Nicolas Ellis, Mathieu Lussier, Jean-François Rivest, amongst others). An active musician online, her YouTube channel boasts over three million views.

2022 marks the addition of two albums to an already vast catalogue: Canzone di Notte, featuring a duo with the coloratura soprano Marianne Lambert (Fidelio) and Transfiguration, a collaboration with the cellist Stéphane Tétreault (ATMA Classique), as well as participating in many recordings and chamber music concerts.

Following in the footsteps of the avant-garde project Orbis (2016-2020), Transfiguration is an equally ambitious production, uniting both music and visual arts in a singular experience. Its tour will officially commence in the spring of 2022, following a premiere at Bourgie Hall in Montreal.

An eager pedagogue, Valérie is a professor of harp at the Montreal Conservatory of Music. There, she heads numerous projects in line with her mission of increasing the harp’s discoverability.

After obtaining her Prix avec Grande Distinction upon completion of her studies at the Conservatory with Caroline Lizotte in 2008, she is awarded the Prix d’Europe. The first harpist to win the prize in almost a century, this esteemed award allows her to further her studies with Rita Costanzi in New York. Her accomplishments continue thereafter, where she is named Révélation Radio-Canada and receives multiple prizes.

Valérie plays on an “Apollonia” harp by Salvi, graciously loaned to her by the Canimex company of Drummondville and belonging to the patron of the arts Roger Dubois.

Stéphane Tétreault, cello

In addition to innumerous awards and honours, Stéphane Tétreault is the recipient of the prestigious 2019 Virginia Parker Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts and was a nominee for the Oscar Morawetz Award for Excellence in Music Performance from the Ontario Arts Council. He is also the laureate of the Prix Opus for “Performer of the Year” for the 2020-21 season, awarded by the Conseil québécois de la musique and accompanied by a Canada Council grant. In 2018, he received the Maureen Forrester Next Generation Award in recognition of his sensitivities with music, his enviable technique, and his considerable communication skills.. In 2015, he was selected as laureate of the Classe d’Excellence de violoncelle Gautier Capuçon from the Fondation Louis Vuitton, and received the Women’s Musical Club of Toronto Career Development Award. Stéphane was the very first recipient of the $50,000 Fernand-Lindsay Career Award as well as the Choquette-Symcox Award laureate in 2013. First Prize winner at the 2007 Standard Life-Montreal Symphony Orchestra Competition, he was named “Révélation” Radio-Canada in classical music, was chosen as Personality of the Week by La Presse newspaper, and awarded the Prix Opus New Artist of the Year.

Chosen as the first ever Soloist-in-Residence of the Orchestre Métropolitain, he performed alongside Yannick Nézet-Séguin during the 2014-2015 season. In 2016, Stéphane made his debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of Maestro Nézet-Séguin and performed at the prestigious Gstaad Menuhin Festival in Switzerland. During the 2017-2018 season, he took part in the Orchestre Métropolitain’s first European tour with Maestro Nézet-Séguin and made his debut with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Stéphane has performed with violinist and conductor Maxim Vengerov and pianists Alexandre Tharaud, Jan Lisiecki, Louis Lortie, Roger Vignoles, Marc-André Hamelin, Charles Richard-Hamelin and John Lenehan and has worked with conductors Michael Tilson Thomas, Paul McCreesh, John Storgårds, Rune Bergmann, Kensho Watanabe and Tung-Chieh Chuang amongst many other. He has participated in a number of masterclasses, notably with cellists Gautier Capuçon and Frans Helmerson.

Stéphane was a student of the late cellist and conductor Yuli Turovsky for more than 10 years. He holds a master’s degree in Music Performance from the University of Montreal.

Stéphane plays the 1707 “Countess of Stainlein, Ex-Paganini” Stradivarius cello, on generous loan by Mrs. Sophie Desmarais.

Program
Caroline LIZOTTE Close for Couloir
François VALLIÈRES Double-Monologue
Kelly-Marie MURPHY Si Veriash a la Rana
Alexandre GROGG Variations sur le thème de La Folia
D’un cygne l’autre
Marjan MOZETICH Sentiment transfiguré

Wednesday, May 25, 2022 at 9:00pm
Thursday, May 26, 2022 at 9:00pm
To purchase your tickets visit: www.mbam.qc.ca/en/bourgie-hall/