Guillaume Tardif
Dr. Guillaume Tardif - Department of Music
Canadian violinist Guillaume Tardif pursues an active career as a performer and pedagogue. He regularly travels on recital tours and appears as soloist with orchestras in prominent venues in Canada, the United States, Europe, Asia, South America, and Australasia – most recently at Carnegie-Weill Hall in Paganini’s 24 Caprices. He often performs repertoire ranging from early music to contemporary works and introduces many lesser-known works and original compositions, cadenzas, and arrangements. He is also often heard on radio and TV networks. He has produced several CD recordings, including ‘Swarm: Music for Two Violins’ (Dell'Arco / Amethyst, Canadian Music Centre - Naxos of America), ‘Paganini’s Shadow - H. W. Ernst’ (Olms-Verlag), ‘Tales from the Dinarides’ (Wirth Institute), ‘From the Library of Joseph Szigeti’ (Dell’Arco), and ‘Virtuoso Encores’ (Dell’Arco). He has also been a guest concertmaster for a number of ensembles and performed in company of many distinguished musicians.
He holds degrees from the Eastman School (DMA) and the Conservatoire du Quebec (Premier Prix) and earned awards at the Canadian Music Competition. Guillaume Tardif is Associate Professor of Violin and String Area Coordinator at the Department of Music, University of Alberta. He has been a guest artist or professor at various universities and conservatories, including the Grieg Academy (Norway), Royal College of Stockholm (Sweden), Turku and Jyväskylä Academies (Finland), Amsterdam and Groningen Conservatories (The Netherlands), Liszt Academy, Academy of Sciences, and Universities of Miskolc and Debrecen (Hungary), Hong Kong Academy, Andong University (South Korea), Central Conservatory of Music and Zhejiang University (China), Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand), and several universities in Brazil.
In 2012, he was a visiting faculty member at the University of Innsbruck, Austria as part of an exchange through the Wirth Institute for Central European Studies. He has also been a faculty member at the Semper Music International Festival (Italy), VCU Global Summer Institute of Music (Richmond, VA), and Beverly Hills International Music Festival (Los Angeles, CA). Apart from performance activities, his research interests include string literature and pedagogy, the business of music, and culture and creativity. Recent publications include a book chapter "H. W. Ernst: Virtuosity and Flow" (Olms-Verlag, 2018), which includes a companion CD that features seven works by Ernst (with Viktoria Reiswich-Dapp, piano), a book chapter "Dialogues, Duels, Diets: Leclair, the French Violin School, and the 2-Violin Repertoire" (Brepols, 2015), and a book review for "Ad Parnassum" (October 2015). He is often involved as an adjudicator for competitions and music foundations. Various granting agencies have supported his research initiatives, including projects such as the Dare to Discover Series with the Enterprise Quartet and the SSHRC-sponsored Genius of the Violin video-documentary.
Email: guillaume.tardif@ualberta.ca