Louis Lavigueur

Lavigueur, Louis

Lavigueur, Louis. Conductor, b Quebec City 19 Oct 1949; B MUS (Laval) 1974, M MUS (Laval) 1977. He was introduced to choral conducting at 16 when he was appointed assistant director of the college choir where he studied. He subsequently studied conducting at Laval University with Armand Ferland and Chantal Masson and at McGill University with Alexander Brott. A Canada Council grant allowed him to study privately 1976-7 with Franz-Paul Decker. At the same time he was artistic director 1971-8 of the choir Les Rhapsodes (with whom he recorded an LP) and of its chamber orchestra. In 1977 he won the third prize at the International Competition of Young Conductors of Besançon, France. He also attended numerous sessions in Europe and in the USA during summer academies, notably with Pierre Dervaux and Helmuth Rilling. In 1978 he became assistant conductor of the OJQ and was concurrently artistic director of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Youth Orchestra and guest conductor of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra (1979-81). From 1979 to 1984 he was the artistic director of the Elgar Choir of Montreal. He became the choir director and assistant orchestra conductor at the CMM in 1980, and was appointed artistic director of the Montreal Symphony Youth Orchestra in 1986 and of the Orchestre de chambre de Hull in 1990. In 1985 he began to conduct the Grand orchestre de saxophones de Montréal and the orchestras and choirs of the Pierre Laporte Secondary School. In 1984 he founded the Ensemble vocal Louis-Lavigueur. He has been a guest conductor with the Kingston, Montreal, Quebec, and Sherbrooke Symphony Orchestras, and the Orchestre philharmonique des pays de la Loire, France, among others. He conducted his vocal ensemble, a choir from the Pierre Laporte school, and an instrumental ensemble on a CD devoted to Hector Gratton's L'Imagerie with soloists Marie Laferrière, Chantal Rioux, Normand Richard, and Bernard Levasseur (1990, CBC SMCD-5109). See also Discography for Orchestre métropolitain.

Lavigueur is the great-grandson of the violinist and composer Célestin Lavigueur.