Mozart et Haydn, vents et harpe

Cellist and harpsichordist Jonathan Cohen is one of the most accomplished and sought-after British musicians of his generation. A fervent promoter of chamber music, he has mastered and explored repertoires ranging from baroque opera to the classical symphony. Cohen gained widespread recognition as associate conductor of Les Arts Florissants and, from 2010, as founder and artistic director of the Arcangelo ensemble. He has worked with Les Violons du Roy since 2014 and became their musical director in 2018. He also serves as artistic director of the Tetbury Music Festival and Boston’s prestigious Handel and Haydn Society.

A much-in-demand guest conductor, Cohen has appeared on both sides of the Atlantic with numerous ensembles, including the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Basel Chamber Orchestra, the Liège Royal Philharmonic, the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France, the New York Philharmonic and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra.

Throughout the 24-25 season, he returns to Kammerorchester Basel and directs performances of St Matthew Passion with both Rotterdam Philharmonic and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. He returns to Glyndebourne Festival for a revival of Barrie Kosky’s production of Handel Saul. He leads both Handel and Haydn Society and Houston Symphony Orchestra in Messiah, and with Handel and Haydn he also conducts Haydn The Seasons, Mozart Requiem and Beethoven Mass in C.

In addition to his impressive discography of almost 30 works as director of Arcangelo, he has recorded three albums with Les Violons du Roy, all of which have garnered national and international acclaim. His album devoted to Handel and Glass with American countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo earned Les Violons du Roy their first-ever Grammy nomination in 2019. Cohen has introduced several prestigious guest artists to audiences of Les Violons du Roy and has toured three times in Europe and North America with them.

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.

On the production front, Valérie manages two companies that oversee projects encompassing original production, touring, music publication, and CD production.

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.

A unique ensemble in Quebec's musical landscape, Pentaèdre explores and introduces the public to a varied and original chamber music repertoire from the great tradition of music for winds. Co-founded in 1985 by Normand Forget (oboe), Guy Pelletier (flute), Gilles Plante (clarinet), Michel Bettez (bassoon) and Francis Ouellet (horn), the ensemble also welcomed flutist Danièle Bourget aboard for many years.

Pentaèdre is currently made up of five talented performers whose technique and precision are unanimously acclaimed: Ariane Brisson (flute), Élise Poulin (oboe), Martin Carpentier (clarinet), Louis-Philippe Marsolais (horn) and Mathieu Lussier (bassoon).

Over the years, the ensemble has collaborated with renowned performers including tenors Christoph Prégardien and Rufus Müller, baritones Russell Braun and Phillip Addis, soprano Karina Gauvin, pianists Naida Cole, David Jalbert, Iwan Llewelyn-Jones and Charles Richard-Hamelin. Pentaèdre has also teamed up with renowned chamber music ensembles such as the Penderecki String Quartet, Quatuor Arthur-LeBlanc, Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet, Quintette à vent de Marseille, Azahar Ensemble and Slowind, and has performed widely in Canada, Europe, the US and Middle East.  

Pentaèdre’s seven recordings to date include a chamber version of Schubert’s Winterreise by Normand Forget, awarded the Opus Prize in 2008, and an arrangement of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, nominated at the ADISQ gala in 2014. To these accolades are added excellent reviews of the ensemble’s original performances L’amour est un opéra muet and A Chair in Love, as well as an Opus Prize in 2002 in the category “Concert of the Year: New, Contemporary and Electroacoustic Music.” In 2017, pursuing its commitment to developing and disseminating repertoire for wind quintet, Pentaèdre instituted the Fonds Normand Forget, whose mission is to support the creation of new works, both locally and internationally.

Flutist Ariane Brisson never ceases to captivate audiences and critics with the finesse of her playing and the sincerity of her interpretations, seizing every opportunity to surprise and offer a unique voice on the musical scene. Her nomination as Discovery of the Year at the 24th Opus Awards Gala and as Grand Laureate at the coveted Prix d’Europe are among the many distinctions that mark her career.

An accomplished and versatile musician, Ariane Brisson's most recent collaborations with Les Violons du Roy, the Trois-Rivières and Drummondville Symphonic Orchestras, I Musici and the Neues Zürcher Orchester (Switzerland) as a soloist have allowed the flautist to present a vast repertoire, ranging from Johann Sebastian Bach to Guillaume Connesson.

Charmed by the fluidity and sensitivity of Ariane’s playing, the musicians of the renowned wind quintet Pentaèdre invited her to join the ensemble in 2016. She has been its artistic director since 2019. Curious, Ariane’s reflections led her to complete a doctorate in performance at the Université de Montréal in 2022, under the tutelage of Jean-François Rivest and Michel Duchesneau, and thus to rethink the interpretation and pedagogy of the transverse flute. In May 2022, Ariane Brisson and pianist Olivier Hébert-Bouchard’s very first album for flute and piano, Mythes, was released on the ATMA Classique label, which features exclusively original transcriptions by the flutist. In March 2025, a disc dedicated to two Sonatas for flute and piano by Prokofiev, with pianist Philip Chiu, will be released, still under the ATMA label.

Principal flute of the Drummondville Symphony Orchestra and the Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, Ariane also leads fruitful collaborations with the greatest orchestral ensembles in Quebec, including Les Violons du Roy, the Orchestre Métropolitain and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, leading her to perform regularly in North America, Europe and Asia. A sought-after and passionate teacher, the flutist has been teaching with great enthusiasm since 2019 at the Faculty of Music of the Université de Montréal, where she is a lecturer.

Ariane Brisson would like to particularly thank the Fondation du Prix d’Europe, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ), the Sylva-Gelber Foundation, the Observatoire interdisciplinaire de création et de recherche en musique (OICRM) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), foundations and organizations that allow her to ambitiously realize her various artistic and research projects. Sensitive to the various aesthetics of the musical repertoire, Ariane plays in turn on a Yamaha transverse flute made of grenadilla wood, as well as on a Powell 10K flute kindly loaned by the Compagnie Canimex Inc. (Drummondville, Canada), owned by patron Roger Dubois.

Élise Poulin began her oboe studies at École secondaire Joseph-François-Perrault. Very early in her career, she had the opportunity to perform as a sub with several orchestras throughout Quebec: the Orchestre symphonique de Laval, Orchestre symphonique de Trois-Rivières, Orchestre symphonique de Longueuil, Orchestre symphonique du Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean, Société de musique contemporaine du Québec, I Musici chamber orchestra and many others. In addition to orchestral music, Élise’s English horn playing is featured in the film Les Petits Cochons 2, music by Martin Léon. She has also enjoyed many collaborations with the École de danse contemporaine.

Élise Poulin has been awarded bursaries by the Fondation Pierre Rolland, the Canadian program Stingray Rising Star and the Fondation du Père-Lindsay. She also received a scholarship from the latter Foundation to attend HEC-Montréal’s Formation en affaires et développement de carrière pour musiciens (Business Training and Career Development for Musicians) program.

Élise studied at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal (class of Lise Beauchamp), where she obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in addition to completing the Concours in chamber music. She also studied at the Conservatoire Boulogne-Vaillancourt in Paris in the class of oboist Olivier Doise, as well as at the Université de Montréal under Vincent Boilard.

Élise teaches oboe at École secondaire Pierre Laporte, École secondaire St-Edmond as well as the Coopérative des professeurs de musique de Montréal.

Martin Carpentier earned his Bachelor’s in Clarinet Performance, magna cum laude, from McGill University, where he studied with Emilio Iacurto. He went on to serve as Principal Clarinet with the Orchestre des jeunes du Québec. After studying under Karl Leister (Principal Clarinet with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra) in 1992 and subsequently obtained his Master’s Degree in Performance from the Université de Montréal, under the supervision of André Moisan.

A highly sought-after clarinetist, Martin Carpentier is a member of Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (NEM) and of Pentaèdre. He also performs regularly with the Orchestre Métropolitain, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, the Opéra de Montréal, Les Violons du Roy and I Musici de Montréal, and has recorded CDs with Société des vents de Montréal, Pentaèdre and NEM.

Martin teaches clarinet at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM), the Université de Montréal and at Collège Vincent-d’Indy.

A member of Pentaèdre since 2002, Louis-Philippe Marsolais’ exceptional technical mastery and musicality have brought inestimable richness to the ensemble.

Formerly Principal Horn with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra, Associate Principal Horn with the Orchestre symphonique de Québec and Third Horn with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Louis-Philippe Marsolais currently serves as Principal Horn with the Orchestre Métropolitain. A renowned recitalist, concert performer and chamber musician, he performs regularly throughout North America, Europe and Asia. A winner of three prizes at the prestigious Munich Competition in September 2005, he has also received numerous awards at international competitions, including the Geneva Competition, Mozart Competition in Rovereto and the Trévoux International Horn Competition.

As a soloist, he has performed on several occasions with the Montreal, Quebec, Trois-Rivières, Longueuil and Peterborough symphony orchestras, the Orchestre Métropolitain, Bavarian Radio Orchestra, the Munich, Geneva, Neuchâtel, Zürich and Montreal chamber orchestras, the Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano, Les Violons du Roy and the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec.

Louis-Philippe Marsolais has cultivated a special interest in contemporary music and has premiered several works by Canadian, Swiss, German and French composers for solo horn, horn and band or for chamber music ensemble. He is also Associate Professor at the Faculty of Music of Université de Montréal.

Appointed Artistic Director of Arion Baroque Orchestra in 2019, Mathieu Lussier previously served as Associate Conductor of the chamber orchestra Les Violons du Roy from 2012 to 2018, directing the ensemble’s performances throughout Canada and in Mexico, Brazil and the US, and collaborating with artists including Marc-André Hamelin, Alexandre Tharaud, Jeremy Denk, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Philippe Jarrousky, Julia Lezhevna, Anthony Marwood and Karina Gauvin. In 2014, he received the Canada Council for the Arts’ Jean-Marie Beaudet Award for orchestral conducting. As Artistic Director of the Lamèque International Baroque Music Festival from 2008 to 2014, Mathieu Lussier also led various Canadian ensembles including Arion Baroque Orchestra, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Orchestre Métropolitain, Orchestre symphonique de Trois-Rivières, Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra, I Musici de Montréal, Symphony Nova Scotia (Halifax), Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, as well as the Drummondville and Sherbrooke symphony orchestras.

For the past 20 years, Mathieu has tirelessly and passionately introduced audiences throughout North America, South America and Europe to the modern and Baroque bassoons as both solo and orchestral instruments. He continues to pursue a career in chamber music with Pentaèdre in Montreal, and was appointed Professor at the Faculty of Music of Université de Montréal in the summer of 2014. A talented communicator known for his humour and eloquence, Mathieu Lussier also served as President of the Conseil québécois de la musique from 2012 to 2015 and as President of CAMMAC from 2015 to 2017. In August 2019, he was named Vice-Dean of Undergraduate Studies, Professorial Affairs and Faculty Life at the Faculty of Music of Université de Montréal.

Mathieu Lussier is also a composer whose catalogue comprises more than 50 works performed regularly in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. In 2018, he composed part of the music for the film La chute de l’empire américain by Oscar-winning director Denys Arcand. His works are published by Trevcomusic (US), Accolade (Germany), June Emerson (UK) and Gérard Billaudot (France).