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

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

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.

Project 23.6°N, named after the geographic coordinates of the country of Taiwan, consists of KaiChen Cheng (flute), Pin-hui Tsai (cello), and Calvin Hu (piano) who formed the group under their shared heritage and love of Taiwanese culture. As an ensemble, they not only strive to perform the music of Taiwanese composers from past to present, but also to serve as a cultural advocate of the diJerent traditions and stories from the island. From traditional Formosan melodies to contemporary sounds, Project 23.6°N aims to share the sounds of Taiwan with a global audience.

Project 23.6°N is generously supported by the Banff Centre Artists' Awards.

Shahriyar Jamshidi, a Kurdish-Canadian kamānche/ kamāncheh player, composer, and vocalist with a pronounced cultural background is renowned for his creative and masterful kamānche improvisations, both as a soloist and in ensembles. He is a graduate of Tehran University of Art and a former artist-in-residence at Banff Centre. Shahriyar has devoted his artistic profession to the preservation and transmission of the Kurdish musical heritage.

Since settling in Canada in 2012, Shahriyar has consistently sought new musical languages, thereby crossing cultures with his kamānche recitals. He already performed at the University of Minneapolis School of Music; Cello Biënnale Amsterdam; University of Glasgow; the 33rd World Conference of International Society for Music Education (ISME), Azerbaijan; Festival du Monde Arabe de Montréal; Canadian Opera Company; McMaster University; Sound Symposium XXI; and collaborated with the Windsor Symphony Orchestra (2019) and Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra (2024). He released four solo albums - his latest recording “My Sunset-Land ROJAVA” is dedicated to all women who lost their lives to liberate Kobanî, Rojava (Western Kurdistan in Syria) in 2015.

Shahriyar has received several Canadian and international awards including ISME in 2018. 

Shahriyar Jamshidi is generously supported by the David and Peggy Leighton Endowment and Banff Centre Artists' Awards. 

Multi-percussionist Haruka Fujii has become one of the most prominent solo percussionists and marimbists of her generation. She has won international acclaim for her interpretations of contemporary music, having performed numerous premieres of works from luminary composers.  Since 2010 Ms. Fujii has performed as an artist of the Grammy Award winning Silkroad Ensemble, joining a group of international musicians founded by Yo-Yo Ma and serves as the Associate Artistic Director alongside with the new artistic director Rhiannon Giddens. 

Ms. Fujii’s passion for introducing audiences to new percussion music has put her on stage with diverse orchestras and ensembles. She has appeared as a soloist with the San Francisco Symphony, Munich Philharmonic, Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Nationale de Lyon, and the NHK Symphony Orchestra. She is a member of San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and Line C3 Percussion Group, also Utari Percussion Duo, a duet project with her sister Rika which actively commissions new compositions from young composers. In addition to her career as a performing artist, Ms. Fujii is a faculty member of San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and has been a frequent guest instructor at Juilliard Summer Percussion Seminar and several international percussion festivals. She is also a founder and creative director of a nonprofit organization Nippon Kobo, a new cultural event series introducing Music+Culture from contemporary Japan,.
 

Italian pianist Fabio Bidini is one of his generation’s top-flight pianists. His appearances have included performances with London Symphony Orchestra at The Barbican, Philharmonia Orchestra of London at Royal Festival Hall, San Francisco Symphony, New World Symphony, Dallas Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Forth Worth Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra Prague at the Rudolphinum, and Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra at Liszt Academy Hall. He has collaborated with conductors including Michael Tilson Thomas, Carlos Prieto, Max Valdes, Dimitry Sitkovetsky, Ivan Fisher, Jesus Lopez Cobos, JoAnn Falletta, Zoltan Kocsis, Michael Christie, and Gianandrea Noseda.

Fabio Bidini is in great demand as a chamber music partner. He is the pianist of the highly acclaimed ensemble, Los Angeles Piano Trio and has enjoyed artistic collaboration with many ensembles and artists including Trio Solisti, Modigliani Quartet, American String Quartet, Janacek Quartet, Brodsky Quartet, Szymanowski Quartet, Zoltan Kocsis, Alexis Pia Gerlach, Maria Bachmann, Eva Urbanova, Nina Kotova, Dimitri Ashkenazy, and Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker.

Mr. Bidini has repeatedly performed at the prestigious festivals of Europe, including the Tuscan Sun Festival Cortona/Napa, Festival Radio France Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon, La Roque d’Anthéron International Piano Festival, Stern Grove Festival, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli International Piano Festival, Festival dei due Mondi and most recently, Grant Park Festival.

Fabio Bidini began his piano studies at the age of five. He graduated magna cum laude from Cecilia Conservatory in Rome and studied composition at Florence Conservatory. He has been awarded first prize in eleven of Italy’s most prestigious national piano competitions and has been the recipient of the top prizes awarded in eight international competitions - Terni, Köln, Busoni 1988 and 1992, Pretoria, Marsala, London and the Van Cliburn Fort Worth. He made his North American debut in 1993 with Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

In 2015 Fabio Bidini became the first recipient of the Carol Grigor Piano Chair – a new position enabled by a $5,000,000 endowment gift from the Colburn School’s board chairwoman Carol Colburn Grigor in Los Angeles. Mr. Bidini has been Professor of Piano at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler, in Berlin, one of Europe’s premiere music conservatories. He also serves as an Artist-in-Residence at Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Köln.

Fabio Bidini’s discography comprises thirteen CDs recorded under the labels BMG, Classichord, Musikstrasse, EPR and True Sounds. He is a Steinway artist.