This gem of a chamber orchestra shines more brightly each season.   Driven by the force of their collective energy, and by their dynamic conductor, Bernard Labadie, Les Violons du Roy produce a sound which can be described as alchemy: a mixture of elements that achieves a spectacular result, desired by many and possessed by few.   Since 1984, this ensemble of fifteen musicians from Québec City, founded by Artistic Director Bernard Labadie, has been performing the vast chamber orchestra repertoire with a stylistic approach perfectly suited to the music of each period.   They achieve an entirely distinctive sound by performing Baroque music on modern instruments, using Baroque period bows.

Bernard Labadie     Photograph - Bill Murphy

Les Violons du Roy's CD, G. F. Handel: "Apollo e Dafne" & "Silete venti" (xCD-90288) won a 2000 Juno Award, in the category of Best Classical Album: Vocal or Choral Performance.   Their most recent release, J.S. Bach: Art of the Fugue [xCD-90297], has been nominated for a 2001 Juno Award, in the category of Best Classical Album: Large Ensemble.   Issued by the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Juno is the Canadian equivalent of an American Grammy Award.

Well-known in North America thanks to numerous concerts and broadcasts on CBC and National Public Radio, Les Violons du Roy have toured in Belgium, Spain, Germany, France and Morocco.   The orchestra has twice been invited to perform at Lincoln Center, where their concert in tribute to the victims of September 11th was met with high praise.   The New York Times called it a performance with "an intensity that seemed tied to the moment."   In a review of the ensemble's 1997 performance at the Mostly Mozart Festival, The New York Times said "There was a sense of event about the program and the playing.   These musicians have absorbed the lessons of the early music movement in terms of historically informed performance practices.   Yet they play on modern instruments (though the string players do use period bows), and this gives their work a bracing combination of stylistic insight and robust, modern sound."