Ensemble Paramirabo: It Was Inside You All Along

A graduate of the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal and McGill University, flautist Jeffrey Stonehouse performs on stages across Canada as well as abroad in Europe, the United States and Mexico. Very active in the Montreal new music scene, he is co-founder and artistic director of Paramirabo and flautist of the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne. He also performs with ECM+, SMCQ and No Hay Banda. He is artistic director of the specialized broadcaster Le Vivier. Jeffrey also works as a freelancer in orchestras in Quebec. He performs with the Orchestre Métropolitain, I Musici, as well as the symphony orchestras of Trois-Rivières, Laval, Quebec City and Drummondville. As a soloist, he has performed with the Orchestre Métropolitain, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra and at the festivals Journées de l'informatique musicale (Paris), Cluster New Music + Integrated Arts (Winnipeg), Mise-En (New York) and Chrysanthemums and Maple Leaves Festival (Vancouver).

He is the winner of the Best Performer Award at the Soundscape Festival (Maccagno, Italy) as well as 2nd prize in the TD-Canada Trust Young Artist Competition.

Other projects include the iso project (with harpist Robin Best) and Altra Voce (with soprano Sarah Albu).

He can be heard on several records on the labels: ATMA, Naxos, Centrediscs, and Redshift Records.

Photo by Brenden Friesen

Viviana Gosselin has been presented as a soloist by ECM+ and Paramirabo. She performs in concert with ECM+, the ARKEA ensemble, the Sinfonia de Lanaudière, the Orchestre symphonique de l'Estuaire, the Opéra bouffe du Québec and the Radio-Ville-Marie choirs and the Petits chanteurs du Mont-Royal. She has collaborated with the groups of Mario Pelchat, Marc Hervieux and OktoEcho. Viviana graduated from the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal in Carole Sirois' class. She was an intern at the Orchestral Institute of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa during the 2010-2011 season. She is a prizewinner of the Concours de musique de la Montérégie and Verdun and received the Montée des arts (2006) and Wilfrid Laurier (2008) scholarships. In addition to her talents as a cellist, she is also active on the Montreal scene as a graphic designer and computer graphics artist.

Photo by Brenden Friesen

Gwénaëlle Ratouit is a versatile clarinetist active as a chamber musician and orchestral musician in Montreal. Her curiosity now leads her to perform in various projects between classical and contemporary music in Europe and Canada.

After several years of musical studies in France where she perfected her skills with the soloists of the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine including Richard Rimbert, Gwénaëlle developed her musical personality and refined her playing alongside Martin Carpentier at the University of Montreal where she obtained her Master of Interpretation. She also holds a French teaching diploma as well as a Bachelor of Musicology.

Winner of several prizes and scholarships, she notably won the First Julie Sirois Prize organized by the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne twice in a row in 2021 and 2022.

Playing from the small clarinet to the bass clarinet, Gwénaëlle is a permanent member of the contemporary music ensembles Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Paramirabo and also a member of the reed quintet 5ilience. She can be found in classical repertoire with the wind octet Ad Hoc. She participates in numerous recordings for emerging artists and film music composers in Quebec. She also performs as a supernumerary in symphony orchestras and wind ensembles in France and Canada.

Very involved in the transmission of knowledge, she currently teaches clarinet and bass clarinet in secondary schools.

Photo by Brenden Friesen.

A 2016 graduate of the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal where he studied with Johanne Arel, Hubert Brizard is a violinist from Longueuil. Recipient of several summer scholarships, he had the opportunity to perfect his skills with great violinists such as Pinchas Zukerman, Grigory Kalinovsky, William Van Der Sloot, Jonathan Crow and Andrew Wan. He has been a member of the Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal (ECM+) for 3 years, in addition to being a supernumerary for ensembles such as I Musici, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Orchestre Symphonique de Sherbrooke, as well as the Orchestre Symphonique de Longueuil. He can also be seen occasionally in SMCQ concerts.

Passionate about new music, he has participated in many memorable creations, such as Hockey Noir by André Ristic (ECM+), Evta by Ana Sokolovic (ECM+), Who Can Go Up to the Mountain of the Eternal by Katia Makdissi-Warren (NEM) as well as …and at the End… by Brice Gatinet.

Photo by Brenden Friesen

Soloist, chamber musician and creator, Montreal pianist Pamela Reimer is renowned for her versatility and great musical complicity. She has created, toured and recorded with the Bradyworks ensemble, the Blue Rider Ensemble, the Ensemble contemporain de Montréal, the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec, Orford Six Pianos, Erreur de Type 27, the Ensemble Paramirabo, No Hay Banda and in duets with flautist Marie-Hélène Breault and percussionist Beverley Johnston. Her passion for dance and theatre has led her to interdisciplinary collaborations with Les Grands ballets Canadiens, the National Ballet of Canada, and to the creation of theatrical concerts, including Les Non-dits (2023) with Krystina Marcoux and Nick Carpenter; '50 questions @ 50' (2019), directed by Marie-Josée Chartier; and Perspectives d'Hildegard (2016), directed by Alice Ronfard. She has received several grants from the Canada Council for the Arts. From 2016 to 2018, she was artist-in-residence at Concordia University, and in 2020, guest pianist in London with the London Sinfonietta. Her recent recordings are 'Mes hommages' (2019): works for flute and piano by Quebec composers, with Marie-Hélène Breault; and 'Musique de François Tousignant' (2021), with the Ensemble Paramirabo, where she can be heard on piano, harpsichord and synthesizer. She teaches at the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal.

Photo by Brenden Friesen

Krystina Marcoux is recognized for her flamboyant energy, musical precision and artistic versatility. In 2012, she won first prize at the Montreal Symphony Orchestra’s Standard Life Competition, where her “unique connection with the audience” was highlighted by the jury, who called her an “exceptionally promising young artist.” In August 2019, she made her solo debut with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Maestro Kent Nagano, and in December 2022 she will present a solo marimba recital at the prestigious Montreal Bach Festival.

Krystina firmly defends the idea that the stage is a malleable material that needs to be folded, curved, just like modeling clay. Combining theater, dance, stand-up, mime, humor or even sports with her percussion, Krystina strives to open her musical universe to an ever wider audience. Despite her young age, she has already signed 9 shows. Originally from Quebec, Krystina obtained her PhD under the supervision of Jean Geoffroy at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Lyon, specializing in the relationship between theater, dance and music in hybrid shows. Her research-practical work was recognized by the jury as 'constituting a pioneering essay in the field of research-creation in France'.

For the past five years, Krystina has shared the stage with cellist Juan Sebastian Delgado. Their duo Stick&Bow explores the repertoire of each era, while adapting it to the wide possibilities offered by this instrumental combination (cello & marimba). Stick&Bow's critically acclaimed debut album, Résonance, was hailed by Toronto's The WholeNote as "simply brilliant" and "totally delightful" and by La Scena Musicale as "full of beautiful surprises." Their second album, released by Analekta, explores JS Bach's Trio Sonatas with renowned harpsichordist Luc Beauséjour. In June 2022, their third album Veni, Vola, Veni was released by Analekta. This album features works by Piazzolla with legendary tango-jazz pianist Gustavo Beytelmann for marimba, vibraphone, cello and piano. Critics have noted the duo as: a youthful and daring approach as well as a more than solid musicality based on impeccable classical studies end up making the Montreal duo a lasting meteor that impresses the music scene here and elsewhere. Gustavo Beytelmann, former pianist of Astor Piazzolla, reworks the latter's compositions with the notoriety of his experience: The meeting between the two young Quebec musicians and the Argentinian patriarch of this learned tango, one of the few still in this world, is important and offers a whole panache not only to this music but also to this duo that amazes the gallery wherever it goes.

Krystina has been an artist at Adams Percussions since 2017 and Stick&Bow has been represented by Barbara Scales at Latitudes45arts since July 2018 and the record label Analekta since 2020.

Photo by Brenden Friesen