Louis Charbonneau

Education

After studying piano for four years with Françoise D'Amour and Hector Gratton, Louis Charbonneau entered the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal (CMM) in 1947 to study solfège with Isabelle Delorme and percussion with Louis Decair and Saul Goodman.

Career Highlights

In 1950, Louis Charbonneau began teaching at the CMM and at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec (CMQ), where he established the percussion class. Until 1975 he trained a great many young instrumentalists, including Pierre Béluse, Ian Bernard, Vincent Dionne, Jean-Normand Iadeluca, Roger Juneau, Serge Laflamme, and Jacques Lavallée.

Appointed timpanist of the Concerts symphoniques de Montréal Orchestra (now the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (MSO)) in 1950, he appeared frequently as a soloist with the orchestra, notably in a 1959 performance of Milhaud's Concerto for percussion and small orchestra under Igor Markevitch, after which the conductor invited him to take part in the 1960 US tour by the Orchestre Lamoureux of Paris. In 1963, he played the Werner Thaerichen Concerto with the MSO under Zubin Mehta. Also in 1963, he was soloist with the McGill Chamber Orchestra in Alexander Brott’s Critic's Corner. In 1976, with the same ensemble, he played Franco Donatoni's Concertino, and his artistry led the critic Claude Gingras to write (Montreal, La Presse, 27 January 1976): “Charbonneau is ... capable of the greatest strength and the greatest refinement at the same time ... He's a kind of ‘poet of the timpani.’”

In 1981, Charbonneau took part in 19 park concerts of Stravinsky's Histoire du soldat under conductor Charles Dutoit. In 1985 in Stockholm, he was the sole representative of a Canadian orchestra to participate in the first concert of the World Philharmonic Orchestra, broadcast by satellite. Charbonneau has performed Bartók's Sonata for two pianos and two percussion with the MSO (1980), at the Scotia Festival in Halifax (1985) and at Saratoga Springs, New York (1991).

Among premieres of works in which Charbonneau has participated are Mercure's Pantomime (1949), Otto Joachim’s Concertante No. 1 (second movement) (1957), and Roger Matton’s Concerto for two pianos and percussion (1958). In September 1977 at Place des Arts, he conducted the Percussions de Strasbourg, six additional percussionists from Montreal, and Gilles Tremblay (piano), in a performance of Varèse's Ionisation; his CMM percussion class gave the Canadian premiere of this work in February 1969 in Toronto.

Charbonneau was a member of the juries for percussion competitions at the Metz Conservatory and the Strasbourg Conservatory in 1972, and at the Paris Conservatory in 1973. That same year he was also a coach for the JM World Orchestra in Israel. He was founder and director of the Percussions du Québec (1972–74) and performed frequently on CBC radio and TV. He taught at the École Vincent-d'Indy (1974–78) and at the Université de Montréal (starting in 1989), gave master classes at the Royal Conservatory of Music of Toronto (now the Royal Conservatory of Music; 1983), at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute (1989), and at the Domaine Forget in Saint-Irénée, Quebec (1989), and gave clinics at the Percussive Arts Society in London, Ontario (1990). In 1990 and 1991, he was timpanist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for several concerts and participated in its 1991 European tour.

Family

Many of Louis Charbonneau’s family members were also musicians. His grandfather, Louis Charbonneau, and his uncle, Maurice Charbonneau, were both cellists, while his father Roger Charbonneau was a bassist.