Saturday, November 9, 2013

Mathieu Lussier · Michael Occhipinti · Glenn Buhr - Canadian Concerto Project, Volume One (MSR Classics 2013)

A versatile musician with an inquiring mind, MATHIEU LUSSIER energetically and passionately promotes the modern and baroque bassoon as solo instruments throughout North America and Europe. He has performed with such ensembles as Arion (Montreal), Les Violons du Roy (Quebec City), Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra (Toronto), Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, and Apollo's Fire (Cleveland). From 2007-2012, he has been artistic director of the Lameque International Baroque Music Festival. He devotes a good deal of his time to chamber music performance as a member of the Ensemble Pentaedre de Montreal, the Caliban Quartet of Bassoonists (Toronto), and the ensemble Musica Franca.
As a conductor, Mathieu has led the Orchestre de la Mission Saint-Charles (Lameque), Les Violons du Roy in Quebec, Ontario and Mexico, the Orchestre Metropolitain de Montreal in a six-concert tour, Arion Baroque orchestra as well as a production of Handel's Acis and Galatea with l Atelier Lyrique de l Opera de Montreal. Since September 2012, he is conductor-in-residence for Les Violons du Roy.
As a composer, Mathieu Lussier has a catalogue with more than forty works to his credit and they are heard regularly in concert halls in North America, Europe and Australia. In August 2009, his Bassango, in its version for bassoon and string orchestra, was awarded Third Prize in the category Contemporary Classical Song at the Just Plain Folks Awards in Nashville, Tennessee. His works are published by Trevco Music (USA), Accolade (Ger-many) and Gerard Billaudot (France).
GLENN BUHR is a composer, music curator, producer, band leader, and improvisational pianist. He became well-known in Canada in the mid-1980s when the Toronto and Montreal Symphony Orchestras first championed his work, and in the mid-1990s as front man with conductor Bramwell Tovey of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra's New Music Festival. Glenn Buhr was Composer-in-Residence with the WSO and curator of the New Music Festival from 1990 to 1996.
Buhr has received commissions from many important performers and ensembles including the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Penderecki String Quartet, the Detroit Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, the Verdi String Quartet, pianist Janina Fialkowska, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Toronto Children's Chorus and the Esprit Orchestra. His music has been performed all over the world by such diverse ensembles as the London Sinfonia, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, pianist Louis Lortie, soprano Tracy Dahl and many others. His third Symphony (a choral symphony) waspremiered by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra in February 2008 with pop singer Sarah Slean as soloist.
An eight-time JUNO Award nominee, guitarist/composer MICHAEL OCCHIPINTI's inventive approach to creative music of all kinds has allowed him to work with renowned musicians across many genres including jazz, chamber music, funk, Sicilian music, and any-thing involving modern guitar sounds. His Sicilian Jazz Project has been called a masterpiece of cross-cultural fusion for its creative exploration of Sicilian folk music, and his newest recording The Universe of John Lennon is being praised for reinventing some of the world s most popular songs in a surprisingly original way, with a band featuring some of Canada's most eclectic vocalists and musicians, including Elizabeth Shepherd and Denzal Sinclaire. In 1994 Michael and pianist Paul Neufeld formed the 16-piece Neufeld-Occhipinti Jazz Orchestra.
http://www.msrcd.com