Landry, Jean-Yves
(Joseph Henri) Jean-Yves Landry. Producer, orchestra conductor, (Trois-Rivières, Que, Dec 5, 1925, - Mont St. Hilaire, Que, Feb 12 2003). First prize (Paris Cons) 1951. His early studies were in his home town with J.-Antonio Thompson and Brother Hippolyte (1933-40), and he then studied at the
CMM (1946-47) with
Alfred Mignault (tonic solfa),
Claude Champagne (composition), and
Jean Vallerand (orchestration). He studied orchestral conducting at the Chicago Musical College (1948-50) with Rudolph Ganz while also serving as the regular conductor of the Trois-Rivières Symphony Orchestra. On a Quebec government scholarship (1950-52), he attended Eugène Bigot's conducting class at the Paris Cons and Arthur Honegger's composition class at the École normale de musique. On his return to Canada he was hired by the JMC (
YMC) as a commentator and, in 1956, he joined CBC TV as a producer. His main productions were "Concerts pour la jeunesse" and "
L'Heure du concert" as well as a number of special productions including
Carmen(1960), "Hommage à Charles Munch" (1963), "Hommage à Claude Champagne" (1964), Puccini's
Suor Angelica (1964), Orff's
Carmina Burana (1968), "Hommage à
Wilfrid Pelletier" (1969), Gounod's Faust (1970), "Le Ballet Bolchoï" (1973), and Penderecki's
Canticum Canticorum Salomonis (1975) under the composer's direction. He won two prizes at the Czechoslovakian international festival "Prague d'Or" for his TV productions of two works of Igor Stravinsky,
Sacre du printemps in 1979 and
L'Oiseau de feu in 1980, both played by the
MSO.
L'Oiseau de feu won an Emmy Award in 1980 and a Prix Anik in 1981. Landry first conducted for the CBC in 1955 and subsequently conducted radio and television orchestras in Montreal and Toronto as well as the
Quebec Symphony Orchestra. In the early 1960s he studied conducting with Josef Krips. In 1956 Landry married the pianist
Josephte Dufresne.
Bibliography
Boone, Mike. "'Bird' soars to an Emmy award", The Gazette, (Montreal, 29 Nov 1980).
Author
Gilles Potvin, Gilles M. Leclerc