Bernard Labadie

Bernard Labadie is an internationally recognized expert on 17th and 18th century repertoire and founded Les Violons du Roy and La Chapelle de Québec in 1984 and 1985 respectively. He continues to direct their regular seasons in Quebec City and Montreal and throughout the Americas and Europe on tour. He has made twenty recordings with the ensembles on the Virgin Classics, Dorian, Atma, Hyperion, and Naïve labels.

His services as guest conductor are much sought after, and he regularly accepts engagements with major North American orchestras including the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Saint Louis, Houston and Toronto Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. In Europe, he has taken the podium with Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Bavarian Radio Symphony, Orchestre philharmonique de Radio-France, and the orchestra of Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu.

He is regularly invited to conduct the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in Australia. Increasingly in demand among period-instrument orchestras, he regularly directs the Academy of Ancient Music and has worked with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the English Concert, and Collegium Vocale Gent Orchestra. As a leading ambassador for music in his native city of Quebec, Bernard Labadie was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2005 and a knight of Ordre national du Québec in 2006.

In 2008, he received the Banff Centre’s National Arts Award for his contribution to the development of the arts in Canada, as well as an honorary doctorate from Laval University.