Louise Bessette, Marc Djokic & Chloé Dominguez
Biography Louise Bessette, Marc Djokic & Chloé Dominguez
Louise Bessette
has been renowned over her 35 year career for the excellence of her performances and for her commitment to promoting contemporary music. Numerous organizations and international competitions have seen fit to reward her talent, and her reviews are constantly laudatory. She has recorded a wide variety of repertoire both as a soloist and with chamber ensembles, appearing the world over with distinguished orchestras and by invitation to many first-rate festivals. Many composers write especially for her. Beyond her exceptional performance career, Mrs. Bessette is a significant figure in the musical world, promoting contemporary music every chance she gets, and creating the opportunity for composers to showcase their talents alongside performers, in activities and collaborations that essentially enrich our cultural panorama.
Louise Bessette's musical career is a great arc, consistently demonstrating her deep engagement with the music of her time. She dedicated the year 2008 to the centenary of the birth of Olivier Messiaen. Her efforts and enthusiasm led to the organization of "Automne Messiaen", which featured more than 50 performers, ensembles and organizations celebrating Messiaen in Montreal. The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and his Music Director Maestro Kent Nagano gave a stunning performance of the opera Saint-François d'Assisewhich received the Grand Prix 2008 from the Conseil des Arts de Montréal. Mrs. Bessette shone as a soloist of Messiaen's oeuvre over the course of wide-ranging concerts that brought together seasoned performers, including the SMCQ Ensemble, conducted by Walter Boudreau (Des canyons aux étoiles), l'Orchestre du Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, lead by Raffi Armenian and Louis Lavigueur (Sept Haïkaï, Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine), l'Ensemble Musique Avenir, led by Véronique Lacroix (Oiseaux exotiques), and an evening of poetry and music with the poet and narrator Pierre Morency. In order to perform the Quatuor pour la fin du temps, a seminal piece in Olivier Messiaen's oeuvre, Louise Bessette formed the Ensemble ARTefact with Simon Aldrich (clarinet), Yegor Dyachkov (cello) and Jonathan Crow (violin). This collaboration led her to launch the idea of an homage to the great French composer by commissioning the talented Canadian composer, Nicolas Gilbert, to write a piece for the same group of instruments. This resulted in the quartet "Le temps des impossibles", which was made possible thanks to a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. Then, on the 10 of December, 2008, the date of Messiaen's centenary, Louise Bessette performed the complete Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus at the Chapelle historique du Bon-Pasteur in Montreal. This concert was greeted enthusiastically by the critic Christophe Huss, who rated it among the 10 best concerts of the year: "What started out a celebration became a ceremonial [...] the architectural grasp [...] mastery of time [...] primacy of form and content [...] Louise Bessette's Messiaen is as powerful as Kent Nagano's [... ]" (Le Devoir, December 11, 2008).
Louise Bessette officially celebrated her 30 year musical career on March 31, 2012, at the Chapelle historique du Bon-Pasteur in Montreal. This huge event was part of the 2011-2012 season of the SMCQ, and it consisted in a triple recital by the pianist. A solo and chamber music concert including four world premieres by Canadian composers Serge Arcuri, Michel Boivin, Michael Oesterle and Ana Sokolovic; a solo recital where we heard the pianist performing two major works from the twentieth century, the Suite no. 9 "Ttai" by Giacinto Scelsi and Les Planètes, a phenomenal work by Canadian composer Walter Boudreau; at the ending of this fantastic musical day, British pianist Peter Hill joined Louise Bessette in a stunning program: The rite of spring by Stravinsky (celebrating the centenary of this historical work) and the Visions de l'Amen by Olivier Messiaen.
As a pianist with an eclectic repertoire, and always eager to promote exchange with other art forms, Louise Bessette recorded the works of Charles-Valentin Alkan and Grieg for a film soundtrack in March 2009. "Hidden diary", by the French film director Julie Lopes-Curval and starring Catherine Deneuve and Marie-Josée Croze, was presented as world premiere at the Festival des Films du Monde in Montreal (2009), and then in movie theatres all over the world.
Mrs. Bessette regularly tours throughout America, Europe and Asia. She has been the soloist under the direction of renowned conductors such as Raffi Armenian, Linda Bouchard, Walter Boudreau, Nathan Brock, Charles Bruck, Edward Cumming, Marc David, Agnieszka Duczmal, Charles Dutoit, Mauricio Kagel, Bill Linwood, Diego Masson, Tania Miller, Daniel Myssyk, Kent Nagano, Pascal Rophé, Gerard Schwarz, Michel Swierczewski, Alain Trudel, Lorraine Vaillancourt and Pascal Verrot, performing in New York to Varsovie, and including Montréal, Ottawa, Victoria, Lyon, Strasbourg, Montpellier, Huddersfield, Aarhus and Mexico along the way.
Louise Bessette has recorded as a solo pianist, with orchestras and with chamber ensembles. Her recording Messiaen, Les oiseaux on Analekta label received a wonderful review in the Gramaphone magazine in December 2009. She has worked with the Canadian labels SNE, Les Disques SRC, Centrediscs, Doberman-Yppan, Analekta, Atma Classique, Riche Lieu, and Fonovox; in France with Disques Montaigne and Salabert/Actuels; and in the United States with Mode Records. Chamber music concerts and recordings gave her the opportunity to perform with great performers such as Simon Aldrich, Robert Cram, Jonathan Crow, Lise Daoust, Angèle Dubeau, Yegor Dyachkov, Mark Fewer, Marc-André Hamelin, Brian Manker, Douglas McNabney, Andrew Wan, the Quatuor Alcan, the Quatuor Molinari and London's Arditti Quartet.
Many composers have created works especially for her, including the Canadians Serge Arcuri, Lorraine Desmarais, François Dompierre, José Évangelista, Nicolas Gilbert, Michel Gonneville, Marc Hyland, Alain Lalonde, Maxime McKinley, Silvio Palmieri, Isabelle Panneton, Sean Pepperall, Serge Provost, Anthony Rozankovic, Raoul Sosa and André Villeneuve, and the French composers Claude Ballif, Bruno Ducol, Jacques Lejeune and Costin Miereanu. Gilbert Amy dedicated his Obliques III to her. ...
Marc Djokic
is the Concertmaster of l’Orchestre classique de Montréal and Music Director of ART CRUSH Ensembl’arts. He is a Mécénat Musica Prix Goyer recipient and winner of the 2020 ECMA Classical Recording of the Year for his debut album Solo Seven. Among other distinctions, Djokic is a Prix Opus laureate and has continuously taken on the role of Artist-in-Residence at various institutions and music festivals since 2009. Over the last four years he has been featured in over 100 music videos and video recordings.
From BC Contact to Jeunesses Musicales and Debut Atlantic, Djokic has toured several times throughout Canada and internationally as an accomplished chamber musician. As a soloist Djokic has performed with orchestras such as the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the National Arts Centre Orchestra and Quebec Symphony Orchestra. He will be premiering the violin concerto written for him by Robert Rival, Under the Shadow of the Cypresses, in a multi-city tour with several orchestras in 2022 – 2023.
Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Djokic grew up in a large musical family; he first and foremost studied with his father Philippe Djokic, one of Canada’s great soloists and a pupil of the violin pedagogue Ivan Galamian. Marc Djokic continued his studies in the United States under the tutelage of David Russell, Donald Weilerstein and Jaime Laredo. He performs on a rare Guarnerius violin from 1740, a Carl Becker 1927 and a Hannibal Fagnola 1922.
Chloé Dominguez
maintains a very active life as cellist in the Montreal contemporary and chamber music community. Chloé completed in 2009 her Ph.D. in Performance under the guidance of Matt Haimovitz, at McGill University, where she won the largest privately funded music scholarship in Canada, the Schulich School of Music's Golden Violin award.
Deeply committed to contemporary music, and an associate of the interdisciplinary research centre CIRMMT, she is solo cello of the Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal + and has premiered many works. Chamber music being at the heart of her activities, she has shared the stages with artists such as Mark Fewer, James Campbell, Paul Stewart, Charles-Richard Hamelin, Jonathan Crow, Douglas McNabney, Andrew Wan and Guy Few. Chloé is a member of the ensemble Spirit '20 and is the solo cello of the McGill Chamber Orchestra, As a chamber musician and soloist, Chloé has appeared at the Festival de Lanaudière, Concerts aux Iles du Bic, Montreal Chamber Music Festival, MusiMars, Domaine Forget, Festival of the Sound, Casalmaggiore, Computer Music Conference, Orford Arts Centre and the Festival Classica. She was a recipient of many prestigious awards and scholarships including Radio-Canada's Jeunes Artistes and Galaxie awards, the first prize at the Festival de musique du Royaume, Canada Council for the Arts Career Development grant as well as the Schulich Scholars and the Max Stern Fellowship in Music from McGill University.
Chloé Dominguez was a guest cello teacher at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University in 2014-2015. She currently teaches chamber music at McGill University and at the summer music academy of the Domaine Forget and cello, at the Université du Québec à Montréal. In September 2009, the Canada Council for the Arts' Musical Instrument Bank awarded Chloé Dominguez the 1824 McConnell Nicolaus Gagliano cello for a period of three years. Along with her career as a performing cellist, she is a yoga practitioner and teacher. In 2011, she completed a Sadhana Yoga Chi training with Doug Swenson.
