THE 39TH FESTIVAL DE LANAUDIÈRE – TIME TO TAKE STOCK! July 9 and August 7

For its 39th season, le Festival de Lanaudière invited music lovers to discover some of the works that its founder, Father Fernand Lindsay, liked to hear and teach. Between July 9 and August 7, 2016, fourteen concerts were presented at the Amphithéâtre Fernand-Lindsay, eight in churches throughout the region, and two at the Musée d'art de Joliette. In addition, there were four cinema evenings and five morning yoga sessions held outdoors. Nearly 53,000 people attended Festival events - a significant increase over the figure for 2015.

This year, the Festival featured the outstanding talent of pianists from here and beyond. It was the Festival's artistic ambassador, Alain Lefèvre, who did the kick-off for the 39th season in a concert at the Amphithéâtre Fernand-Lindsay on Saturday, July 9. Accompanied by the Festival Orchestra under the direction of Gregory Vajda, Lefèvre performed Tchaikovsky's famous Piano Concerto No. 1 with all the panache for which he is known.

Other pianists came too, both to the churches and to the Amphithéâtre Fernand-Lindsay, playing to enthusiastic crowds: the young Canadian Tony Yike Yang, who subbed for soprano Karina Gauvin by performing Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Orchestre Métropolitain under Mathieu Lussier; Armenian pianist Nareh Arghamanyan; the American virtuoso George Li; the young Quebec artist Charles Richard-Hamelin; and for the final concert of the season, Nicholas Angelich.

As a prelude to the Festival's 40th anniversary season next year, which will be devoted in large part to Beethoven, this German composer was featured over the course of a week in performances of nine of his string quartets played by theJupiter Quartet; the Violin Concerto by Anthony Marwood, Bernard Labadie and the Violons du Roy; and the Fifth Symphony by Jean-Marie Zeitouni leading the chamber orchestra I Musici de Montréal.

This year, through the wonderful ambiance generated by large screens at the Amphithéâtre Fernand-Lindsay, the Festival was able to pay tribute to the close relationship that exists between music and image. On Saturday, July 23, music lovers and film buffs attended a major premiere: the screening of François Girard's film The Red Violin, accompanied by the music of John Corigliano played on stage by Canadian violinist Lara St. John and a sixty-piece orchestra conducted by Dina Gilbert. Director François Girard was in attendance, and delighted the audience with a pre-concert talk about how the film was made and about the music.

The relationship between music and image was also observed in screenings at some concerts of short animated films from the archives of the National Film Board (NFB) - a new undertaking very much enjoyed by audiences.

In the same vein, the Festival, in collaboration with Place des Arts and the municipalities of Joliette, Saint-Charles-Borromée, and Notre-Dame des Prairies, presented its eleventh season of free, open-air cinema, popular family events that again this year drew crowds to the magical site of the Amphithéâtre Fernand-Lindsay.

Diversity and variety
Once again the Festival offered its audiences programming that contained a diversity of repertory and a wide variety of soloists and ensembles. In the churches and in the Musée d'art de Joliette, in addition to music for piano and for string quartet, there was music from the Renaissance performed to a full house by soprano Suzie LeBlanc and harpsichordist Alexander Weimann; electronically-flavored contemporary music in a concert byAkousma@Lanaudière with works by Myriam Bleau, Pipo Pierre-Louis and Line Katcho; and music for flute alone played by Jocelyne Roy.

At the Amphithéâtre Fernand-Lindsay there was music from today's minimalists played with flair and panache byAngèle Dubeau and La Pietà; a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald from vocalist Jessica Vigneault and the Montreal National Jazz Orchestra led by Christine Jensen; comedian and clarinetist Christopher Hall accompanied by theLaval Symphony and Alain Trudel; French cellist Emmanuelle Bertrand; a concert celebrating the 50thanniversary of the Father Lindsay Music Camp and the 30th of the Fernand Lindsay Choir; the young, dynamic ensemble Collectif9; and the Royal 22nd Regiment with violinist Alexandre Da Costa as soloist.

The final weekend was particularly notable, with performances to full houses of the Montreal Symphony under Kent Nagano and the Orchestre Métropolitain under Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

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