Gilles Auger

Auger, Gilles

Gilles (Joseph Roger) Auger. Conductor, b Quebec City 7 Mar 1957; premier prix chamber music (CMQ) 1979, deuxième prix clarinet (CMQ) 1981, M MUS conducting (Juilliard) 1983. While studying clarinet at the CMQ (1972-81) with Wilfrand Guillemette, he became interested in conducting and received encouragement from Edwin Bélanger and subsequently James De Preist, then musical director of the Quebec Symphony Orchestra. After taking part in various seminars, including one with Mario Bernardi, he continued to study conducting with Jorge Mester and Sixten Ehrling at the Juilliard School in New York (1981-3) where he was a scholarship student (Bruno Walter Memorial). Back in Quebec, he was hired as trainee conductor and then as conductor in residence by the OJQ (1983-6). He won the first prize at the Concours international des jeunes chefs d'orchestre in Besançon, France in 1986, and the Virginia P. Moore Prize of the Canada Council the following year. In 1990 he received from the University of Western Ontario the Clifford Evens Memorial Conducting Award rewarding a successful Canadian conductor.

Auger has conducted the Geneva and Lyons orchestras, the Quebec SO, the Orchestre métropolitain, the NACO and the TS, among others. Actively involved with youth orchestras, he has also conducted the Orchestre des jeunes de Lévis, the NYO and the CBC Sinfonietta in Quebec City, of which he has been the director since its inception in 1983. He is also artistic director of the Orchestre de chambre Gilles Auger created in 1989 by his wife, the pianist Danielle Turgeon. He has been responsible for orchestral classes at Laval University (beginning in 1984) and at the CMQ (from 1986) where he also teaches conducting.