Jacques Després & Guilluame Tardif

"Sonatas & Variations": A new Wirth CD release by Guillaume Tardif, violin and Jacques Després, piano

Jacques Després & Guilluame Tardif, Department of Music, University of Alberta

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Pianist Jacques Després has often appeared as a soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, lecturer, and educator in Canada and abroad. A graduate of the Quebec Conservatoire (Premier Prix), The Juilliard School (MMus), Indiana University (Artist Diploma), and Stony Brook University (Doctor of Musical Arts), he studied with Christiane Sénart, György Sebők, Adele Marcus, and Gilbert Kalish. He earned top prizes at the Prix d’Europe de l’Académie du Québec and at the Montreal Symphony Orchestra Competition. Recordings featuring Jacques Després include the first recordings of the complete piano works and the complete chamber music of Kraus (Naxos), ‘The New Goldberg Variations’ with cellist Tanya Prochazka and ‘Ballade’ (Arktos), and ‘The Children's World of Debussy and Bartók’ (SRI). Jacques Després is Professor and Performance Area Coordinator at the Department of Music, University of Alberta. He also served as Director of the Summer Serenades at Stony Brook University in New York City and as Artist-in-Residence at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

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Violinist Guillaume Tardif graduated from the Quebec Conservatoire (Premier Prix, MMus) and the Eastman School of Music (Doctor of Musical Arts), as a student of Jean Angers and Oleh Krysa. He earned distinctions at the Canadian Music Competition and has performed internationally as a soloist with orchestra, as concertmaster, as a conductor, and in various recital and chamber music settings. He has written arrangements for the violin, published scholarly articles (Brepols, Rodopi-Brill, Ut Orpheus), and produced CD recordings, such as 'Swarm: Music for Two Violins' (CMC/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 presented several new or neglected works, such as Gallois-Montbrun’s ‘24 Caprices de Paganini’ (with pianist Roger Admiral at Carnegie-Weill Hall), and has led innovative performance projects, such as ‘The Genius of the Violin’ video-documentary and the Enterprise Quartet series. He is Associate Professor and String Area Coordinator at the Department of Music, University of Alberta.