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The Viadana Collective
Our Swiss-Canadian ensemble blends voices and historical instruments, and brings together major figures and rising stars of the international early music scene in exploring both well-known and forgotten repertoire of the late Renaissance and early baroque. We borrow our name from composer Lodovico Grossi da Viadana (c.1560–1627), whose life perfectly straddles those two eras, his pioneering career spanning a quarter-century on either side of the year 1600. He wrote in almost every genre of the time: four and five-part masses and vespers, falsobordoni, litanies, instrumental canzoni and sinfonie, polychoral motets and psalm settings (from double-choir, 8-part music to his monumental Salmi a quattro chori), sacred monodies and concerti for few voices with continuo (which he pioneered in his famous Cento concerti ecclesiastici), secular canzonette, 5-voice madrigals… As such, his output remarkably encapsulates the music of the era our ensemble grounds itself in.
Musicians
Maximilien Brisson
Artistic Director; Trombone
A leading specialist of historical trombones and critically-acclaimed conductor, Maximilien is a member of I Fedeli, Le Consort laurentien and canticum trombonorum, and has performed with the Freiburger Barockorchester, Akamus, Concerto Palatino, Collegium Vocale Gent, Les Cornets Noirs, I Gemelli, The Toronto Consort and the Zürich Opera, among others. He is lecturer for Baroque Trombone at the University of the Arts Bremen. As a scholar, he has notably presented his research on the monodies of Lodovico Viadana at the MedRen conference in 2019, and his edition of the complete works of Andreas Oswald is pending publication.
Bruce Dickey
Cornetto
Bruce Dickey is one of a handful of musicians worldwide who have dedicated themselves to reviving the cornetto. It was largely Bruce Dickey, who, from the late 1970s, created a new renaissance of the instrument, allowing the agility and expressive power of the cornetto to be heard once again. His many students in over 40 years of teaching at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, have helped to consolidate and elevate the status of this once forgotten instrument. For his achievements the Historic Brass Society awarded him in 2000 the prestigious Christopher Monk Award for “his monumental work in cornetto performance, historical performance practice and musico-logical scholarship.”
Charles Daniels
Tenor
The tenor Charles Daniels is best known as an interpreter of Baroque music, but his narrative gifts have been praised for music as various as Machaut’s virelais and Graham Treacher’s Divine Madness (2016). His extensive disco-graphy includes Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo with Andrew Parrott, Bach’s St Matthew Passion with the J. S. Bach-Stiftung, Handel’s Messiah, Schütz’s Weihnachtshistorie and Monteverdi’s Vespers with the Gabrieli Consort, Wojciech Kilar’s Missa pro Pace with the Warsaw Philharmonic, and more intimate discs such as Senfl’s Tenorlieder with Fretwork, Heracleitus with the Bridge Quartet, John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera and Lambert airs with Fred Jacobs.
Suzie LeBlanc
Soprano
A charismatic and tireless champion of early music and Acadian culture, LeBlanc is an internationally celebrated Canadian soprano, an early music specialist and educator. She has managed a globe-spanning career for 35 years, collaborating with, among others, Ton Koopman, Sigiswald Kuijken, Richard Egarr, John Toll, Emma Kirkby, Rachel Podger and Stephen Stubbs. She founded Le Nouvel Opéra and is the Artistic and Executive Director of Early Music Vancouver. LeBlanc has been the subject of several music documentaries and has been awarded four honorary doctorates for her immense contributions to music and music education. She was named a member of the Order of Canada in 2015.
Catherine Motuz
Trombone
Catherine Motuz enjoys an active career as a performer, teacher, and researcher. A founding member of I Fedeli, she has played and recorded internationally with ensembles inclu-ding Concerto Palatino, the Amsterdam and Freiburg Baroque Orchestras, Bach Collegium Japan, The English Cornett & Sackbut Ensem-ble, His Majesty’s Sagbutts & Cornetts, and ¡Sacabuche!. As a soloist, she has performed across Canada and at the Midsomer Barock Festival in Copenhagen. She is Lecturer for Historical Trombones at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and has previously taught at McGill University, the Université de Montréal, the Royal Conservatoire of the Hague and the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Vicki St. Pierre
Contralto
Vicki St. Pierre’s voice “invitingly combines clarity of expression and beauty of tone,” and is described as “rich with both a darkness and brightness.” As a specialist in early music, she has performed internationally with such groups as the Academy of Ancient Music, Tafelmusik, Les Violons du Roy, Portland Baroque Orch-estra, ¡Sacabuche!, and the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, as well as with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Victoria Symphony Orch-estra. Vicki has a doctorate in vocal perfor-mance from the University of Toronto, and has been a faculty member at Mount Allison Uni-versity in Sackville, New Brunswick since 2015, where she currently serves as Dean of Arts.
Roland Faust
Bass
Roland Faust started singing at the age of six. After theology studies, he studied singing in Salzburg at the Mozarteum, notably with Barbara Bonney. We was a member of the choir of the Salzburger Landestheater for six years, where he got profound experience of the operatic world. He then explored his love for early music in Switzerland at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, where he specialised in the music of the late Middle Ages and of the Renaissance. He is now a member of the Swedish Radio Choir. Roland regularly appears with many renowned ensembles, such as the Balthasar Neumann Choir, the Stuttgarter Kammerchor, Collegium Vocale Gent and the BR Radiochoir.
Anna Noelle Amstutz
Violin
Highly sought after for her flexibility, her qua-lities as a chamber musician and her willing-ness to embrace truly historical styles of playing, Anna Noelle Amstutz has played with ensembles such as Ad Fontes, Ensemble Resonance along with Les Cornets Noirs, and the Maximilian Consort, among others. Notable projects have included performances of Char-pentier’s Leçons de Ténèbres, Handel’s Acis and Galathea and Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo. She appears on the the CD Stagioni d’Amore (2021) with BERNVOCAL and Hana Blažíková. Eager to participate in effecting positive change in the world, she was also a student of the Peace and Conflict Transformation Studies program at the Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg.
Christophe Gauthier
Harpsichord, Organ
Christophe Gauthier studied harpsichord and organ in Montreal with Mireille Lagacé, Réjean Poirier and Luc Beauséjour. A talented chamber musician, Christophe Gauthier has founded several ensembles, including Les Rendez-vous baroque français, La Frontera and Le Consort laurentien, which was finalist at YorkComp 2019. He plays organ with the Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal, Arion orchestre baroque, I Musici and Orchestre Métropolitain with maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin. As a con-ductor, he has notable led Purcell’s Dido and Eneas, Handel’s Hercules and Charpentier’s David et Jonathas. Christophe teaches harpsi-chord, organ, ear training and music history at the Cégep de Saint-Laurent.
Iason Marmaras
Harpsichord, Organ
A passionate continuo player and improviser and winner of the 1st International Basso Continuo and Partimento Realization Com-petition in 2019, Iason Marmaras is a member of the Scroll Ensemble, extemporising entire concerts after historical models. He was also a laureate of the Berliner Bach-Wettbewerb with ensemble Chorda Elegans. As a soloist, singer, and player, he is a regular guest with ensem-bles such as Cappella Pratensis, La Risonanza, Ex Silentio, and Armonia Atenea. Iason is the founder and director of the Schola Cantorum Sancti Pauli in Athens, and teaches historical improvisation and basso continuo at the Institut für Alte Musik of the Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Wien in Austria.