Cameron Crozman, Les Violons du Roy, Nicolas Ellis
Biography Cameron Crozman, Les Violons du Roy, Nicolas Ellis
Cameron Crozman
A cellist “with a rich imagination and a keen mind” (Diapason), Cameron Crozman is the recipient of the Canada Council for the Arts 2021 Virginia Parker Prize and CBC/Radio-Canada’s 2019-2020 Classical Revelation. He appears in recital and as a soloist in major concert halls (Paris Philharmonie, Shanghai Oriental Arts Centre, and Toronto’s Koerner Hall, among others) and with orchestras across Canada and Europe. A devoted chamber musician, he regularly shares the stage with world-renowned artists including James Campbell, James Ehnes, Augustin Hadelich, and Louis Lortie. After his studies with Paul Pulford in Canada, Cameron attended the Paris Conservatoire in the class of Michel Strauss where he received his Prix de violoncelle with highest honours, and he is a laureate of Gautier Capuçon’s Classe d’excellence de violoncelle at the Louis Vuitton Foundation. He has released recordings on the ATMA Classique and Printemps des Arts de Monte-Carlo labels and his performances have been broadcast on CBC, Radio France, BBC, and medici.tv. He is active in commissioning and premiering new works for cello by some of Canada’s most recognized composers such as Allan Gordon Bell, Kelly-Marie Murphy, and Alexina Louie. Cameron is the co-founder of ClassicalValley—a festival combining music and wine in the Okanagan Valley—and artistic director of chamber music for the Edeta Arts International Festival in Llíria, Spain, a UNESCO Creative City of Music.
On this recording, Cameron Crozman plays a cello by Auguste Sébastien Philippe Bernardel (Père) made in 1849, generously loaned by Paul Pulford.
Nicolas Ellis
is Principal Guest Conductor of Les Violons du Roy. He is also Music Director of the Orchestre National de Bretagne and Artistic Director and Conductor of the Orchestre de l’Agora, which he founded in Montréal in 2013. Nicolas is one of the most active conductors on the Canadian scene. He has appeared with the Vancouver Symphony, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the I Musici de Montréal Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestre symphonique de Québec, the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, the Opéra de Québec and the Opéra de Montréal. Internationally, he was invited to conduct at the Graz Opera, the Opéra de Rennes, the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra in Finland, the Luxembourg Philharmonic and the San Diego Symphony. Among the musical encounters and projects that have strongly influenced him are his former position as Artistic Collaborator of the Orchestre Métropolitain and Yannick Nézet-Séguin from 2018 to 2023, and his role as assistant conductor to Raphaël Pichon and the Ensemble Pygmalion in opera productions at the Opéra-Comique, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, and the Salzburg Festival. At the helm of his Orchestre de l’Agora, Nicolas conducts a rich repertoire ranging from Monteverdi’s Coronation of Poppea to Mahler’s 3rd Symphony. In keeping with the Agora’s outreach mission, Nicolas has set up musical creation projects with teenagers coping with mental illness, educational workshops for children, and a series of monthly concerts for the inmates at the Bordeaux Prison in Montréal. Nicolas Ellis is the recipient of the 2017 Fernand-Lindsay Career Grant and has also been awarded the Prix Goyer Mécénat Musica 2021.
Les Violons du Roy
The chamber orchestra Les Violons du Roy takes its name from the renowned string orchestra of the court of the French kings. The group, which has a core membership of fifteen players, was brought together in 1984 by founding conductor Bernard Labadie, now styled founding conductor, and continues under music director Jonathan Cohen to specialize in the vast repertoire of music for chamber orchestra. Using copies of period bows on modern instruments, the ensemble plays works from the Baroque and Classical period with an approach strongly influenced by current research into performance practice in the 17th and 18th centuries. The orchestra also regularly delves into the repertoire of the 19th and 20th centuries. At the heart of Québec’s musical activity, Les Violons du Roy are also part of Montréal’s cultural offering. Known throughout North America thanks to their numerous concerts broadcast on Radio-Canada, CBC and NPR, they have given concerts in Europe, notably at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Berlin Philharmonic, as well as in South Korea and China. Their United States presence includes regular stops in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Les Violons du Roy’s discography boasts 38 titles, including three Juno Award–winning albums and one Félix Award-winning album. Twelve recordings have appeared on the Dorian label, and eleven under the ATMA Classique label. It has also made recordings with soloists Vivica Genaux, Truls Mørk, Alexandre Tharaud, Marie-Nicole Lemieux, Marc-André Hamelin, Valérie Milot, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Charles Richard-Hamelin, and Diane Dufresne.
