Chantal Juillet | The Canadian Encyclopedia

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Chantal Juillet

Juillet, Chantal. Violinist, b Montreal 19 December 1960. She began playing the violin at six, first studying with Claude Létourneau in Quebec City, and then with Luis Grinhauz in Montreal.

Juillet, Chantal

Juillet, Chantal. Violinist, b Montreal 19 December 1960. She began playing the violin at six, first studying with Claude Létourneau in Quebec City, and then with Luis Grinhauz in Montreal. After winning first prize at the Festivals de musique du Québec in 1969, she performed Bach's Concerto in a minor with the Sherbrooke Symphony Orchestra. Subsequently, she pursued her studies at the Juilliard School in New York with Ivan Galamian and Dorothy Delay, as well as Josef Gingold at the University of Indiana in Bloomington. She also took part in master classes with Nathan Milstein and Max Rostal in Switzerland. Among the prizes she has won are the MSO Competition (1974), the International Stepping Stones of the CBC Talent Competition (1978), and the Prix d'Europe (1979).

The prize from the Young Concert Artists agency in New York, which she won in 1980 following international auditions, led to her debut in the USA at the 92nd Street 'Y' in New York, in 1982. Later on, she gave recitals in several universities and she was the guest of various US orchestras, notably at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. In Canada, Chantal Juillet has given solo performances with the Edmonton, Hamilton, Montreal, Toronto, Victoria and Winnipeg SOs, with the NACO, and the Orchestre métropolitain. She also was a member of the McGill Chamber Orchestra. She became a violinist with the MSO in 1985, and was appointed co-concertmaster of that orchestra in 1990. During a concert by the MSO at Carnegie Hall in November 1990, she and her colleague Andrée Azar were soloists in Alfred Schnittke's Concerto grosso No. 1 for two violins. Her 1991-2 schedule included solo performances with the Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and New York orchestras, in addition to the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Philharmonia in London.

She has recorded works by Prokofiev, Ysaÿe, Vitali, and Bloch with pianist Lorraine Prieur (1977, RCI 439), a disc which was awarded a prize by the Canadian Music Council in 1978, as well as André Prévost's Sonata for violin and piano with William Tritt (6-ACM 28, released in 1987).

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