Alain Trudel
Conductor & trombonist
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Trudel's a conductor, no bones about it Virtuoso trombonist makes his mainstage Opéra de Montréal debut tonight at the helm of Mozart's The Magic Flute
November 11, 2009, 12:00 am
Trudel's a conductor, no bones about it
Virtuoso trombonist makes his mainstage Opéra de Montréal debut tonight at the helm of Mozart's The Magic Flute
By ARTHUR KAPTAINIS, The GazetteNovember 7, 2009
It might work as the setup for a musician joke: Did you hear about the virtuoso trombonist who became a conductor?
Except the perfectly serious punchline is: Sure, Alain Trudel, making his mainstage Opéra de Montréal debut tonight at the helm of Mozart's The Magic Flute.
Trudel is already known for his stickwork as music director of the Orchestre symphonique de Laval. Some will remember him as the signoff music director of the CBC Radio Orchestra in Vancouver, which the Radio 2 authorities, in their wisdom, dissolved last November.
After his much-admired work with singers in May for the Montreal International Musical Competition, Trudel is starting to look like an opera man. A trombonist who loves the voice?
"Oh, they are very close," the 43-year-old native Montrealer protested in his dressing room at Place des Arts. "All our instruments, trombone, violin, whatever, we all try to emulate the voice.
"When you have lessons, the teacher says: 'Sing!' To work with singers is to go with the essence of what we are all trying to do with our instruments."
It so happens that Trudel did sing, in his late teens, as a casual student of the noted Montreal vocal coach Janine Lachance. "She tried to build my range as a tenor, which was limited," he recalls with a chuckle.
As a student at the École secondaire Joseph-François-Perrault - a school that also produced such local orchestra stalwarts as oboist Lise Beauchamp and bassoonist Stéphane Lévesque - Trudel was encouraged to pursue his interest in conducting and spent many hours poring over scores.
Alas, his excellence as a trombonist got in the way. Or did it? Trudel maintains that his tenure as an MSO section trombonist under Charles Dutoit constituted a graduate course in how to organize a rehearsal. In the City of Barcelona Orchestra, he watched another master, Franz-Paul Decker.
"I learned a lot from inside the orchestra," he says, "the trials and errors of my colleagues, what works, what doesn't work."
And as a touring virtuoso and maker of compact discs, Trudel the trombonist could also stake a claim as an honorary fellow of the vocal arts.
"I play a wind instrument, that's a little bit of an edge," he explains. "You have to do phrases, and breathe, do phrases again."
Trudel has been less a trombonist and more a conductor since the spring of 2006, when a rare intestinal ailment required complicated surgery and extended rest. But he had already stepped up to the podium in 2004 as the conductor of the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra.
Indeed, Trudel enjoys good relations with the Toronto Symphony itself, having led the orchestra on Ontario tours. In Vancouver, he is pursing the National Broadcast Orchestra, a private, Internet-based continuation of the late CBC ensemble. Even further west, he is principal guest conductor of the Victoria Symphony Orchestra.
"I am good business for Porter airlines," Trudel comments. "They know me by name."
A gale of laughter meets my observation that the No. 2 Victoria post was once held by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Should we pencil in Trudel for a big European orchestra in 2014? After all, his third child is nearing the end of high school.
"I'm a guy with less of a plan," Trudel said. "I knew the career would continue to grow, but I never thought of this step, then this step, then this step. If I do a good job somewhere the next one will come. I live in the moment, try to do the best job every time."
Sounds like a plan to me.
The Magic Flute opens tonight at 8 in Place des Arts. There are repeat performances on Wednesday, next Saturday and on Nov. 16, 19 and 21. Call 514-842-2112.
My comments two weeks ago about concert facilities were not meant to be comprehensive. One reader points out that Redpath Hall, which is undergoing some exterior renovation, serves Musica Camerata well. He might also have mentioned Arion, an ensemble that performs early music, which suits a wood-trimmed neo-Tudor setting both conceptually and acoustically. To hear new music in this space (which, occasionally, I have) is almost an exercise in irony.
Handsome to look at and acoustically resonant, Redpath has its problems. There is no lobby, nor any fixed stage, and thus no natural separation of performers and audience. Happily, its size and old-fashioned comfort (it was originally a reading room) make it a pleasant space in which to pass intermission.
L'eXcentris, an upscale club fashioned from a former cinema, has already been discussed in this space. Does it have a classical future? A question to return to in 2010. One reader urges me to check out the new KoSA Arts Centre, a rental space in N.D.G.
Another room in the musically challenged frontier west of Atwater is the Studio of the Segal Centre. With its cloak of theatrical curtains, it is probably too dry for classical. It was just fine the weekend before last for jazz, as the Doxas brothers (Chet, sax, and Jim, drums) joined veterans Oliver Jones (piano) and Guido Basso (flugelhorn and trumpet) in a young-meets-not-so-young night also involving bass Morgan Moore and (eventually) trumpet Ron di Lauro.
The old saw about decades making no difference when the common goal is music turned out to be valid. The complicity of Jones (as sure and sweet and economical as ever) and Jim Doxas (better called a percussionist given the level of his art) was particularly fruitful. Basso needed a tune or two to blow the fuzz out of his mouthpiece but his understated melodic style nicely complemented Chet Doxas's more assertive manner.
Anyway, the space, cozy but smartly lit, works for this kind of concert in a way a formal rectangular hall might not. The audience, recognizing the Hoagy Carmichael tunes, added to the atmosphere. Next up in the Power Jazz Series: the Joe Sullivan Big Band on Nov. 15. Go to www.segalcentre.org.
akaptainis@sympatico.ca
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