History

Arion Baroque Orchestra

Arion Baroque Orchestra, founded in 1981, is the only early music orchestra performing on period instruments in Québec and one of the most renowned early music ensembles in North America. Led by the enlightened artistic vision of flutist Claire Guimond, the orchestra offers a prestigious concert series in Montréal featuring more than twenty musicians and with the participation of internationally known guest conductors. The clarity and freshness of Arion’s interpretations have been remarked through the concert tours in Japan, United States, Europe and Mexico. Arion has also put together an impressive recording collection with 26 titles both as an ensemble and as an orchestra, distributed internationally and on the web.

Founded in 1981 by four graduates of the McGill School of Music – Claire Guimond (baroque flute), Chantal Rémillard (baroque violin), Betsy MacMillan (viola de gamba) and Hank Knox (harpsichord) – Arion was first and foremost a quartet. At a time when baroque music was still relatively absent from Quebec’s musical scene, Arion’s founding members chose to specialize in the repertoire of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At its beginning, tenor Edmund Brownless was a part of the group.

It was at the group’s first concert that the name Arion came to mind. The first piece performed by the orchestra, written by the eighteenth-century composer André Campras, was “Arion.” This name, also given to a mythological character who, according to legend, demonstrated immense musical powers, was thus chosen by the members of the ensemble. Little by little, the group organized tours, first to New Brunswick, then to Ontario, in Quebec, in Western Canada, and then internationally: Mexico, Brazil, Europe, etc. Participating in many international competitions, notably the Concours international de Bruges in 1984, the ensemble invited various key figures of the musical world to play in Quebec.

Throughout the years, flutist Claire Guimond was in charge of the quartet’s artistic direction, organizing the group’s concerts, recordings and tours.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the first large project with more than a dozen musicians was performed at Redpath Hall in Montreal, together with Alan Laforest. The disc Table Music by Telemann was recorded at that time. Today, Arion is an orchestra with more than twenty musicians hailing from Quebec and the United States, and it is the only early music orchestra to perform on period instruments in Quebec.

Each year Arion offers a series of five concerts in Montreal and is broadcast regularly on the CBC. During this series, Arion invites conductors and soloists from every corner of the world. One can hear at these concerts, among others, soloist Suzie LeBlanc, Italian violinist Stefano Montanari, cellist Jaap ter Linden, harpsichordist Gary Cooper, English violinist Elizabeth Wallfisch, countertenors Matthew White and Daniel Taylor, violinist and orchestra conductor Monica Huggett and bassoonist Mathieu Lussier.

In 2000 the ensemble performed in the Prairie Provinces of Canada and in the Maritimes, on the east coast of the United States and in Europe (with a performance at Southbank Centre in London). The Arion Orchestra made its first tour to Asia in the fall of 2006 and a tour to British Columbia and The Yukon in the fall of 2009. Arion’s musicians will make a tour of the island of Montreal, in partnership with the Conseil des arts de Montréal, during the 2010-2011 season. The group is currently planning a European tour for fall 2011.

Arion’s impressive discography includes 25 titles both as an ensemble and an orchestra, distributed on the Internet and through several international networks: Naxos (Canada, United States), Codaex (Europe and Great Britain), Mercury (Japan) and ALES Music (Korea). Several artists have collaborated on the recordings such as sopranos Agnès Mellon and Suzie LeBlanc, mezzo-soprano Kimberly Barber, countertenors Matthew White and Daniel Taylor, baritone Max van Egmond and violinist Monica Huggett, as well as Barthold Kuijken, Gary Cooper and Jaap ter Linden.