October 24, 2006 -

OTTAWA, CANADA -- The National Arts Centre Orchestra, featuring Music Director Pinchas Zukerman as conductor and violin soloist, will head to the province of Quebec for a 10-day concert and education tour from November 11 to 20, 2006, presenting eight concerts and 60 education events.

The Quebec Tour 2006 will see the National Arts Centre Orchestra performing concerts led by Pinchas Zukerman in Chicoutimi (Nov. 12 at 14:00), Quebec City (Nov. 14 at 20:00), Trois-Rivières (Nov. 18 at 20:00), and Montreal (Nov. 19 at 14:30). Two student matinees in Chicoutimi on Nov. 13 will be led by Chicoutimi native Jean-Philippe Tremblay, the NAC Orchestra’s former Apprentice Conductor and a graduate of the NAC Conductors Programme. There will be two more student matinees at Domaine Forget in St-Irénée on Nov. 16 led by the NAC Orchestra’s Principal Youth and Family Conductor Boris Brott. Brott will also lead a pre-tour student matinee in Gatineau on Oct. 24.

The National Arts Centre Foundation gratefully acknowledges support for the Quebec Tour by Major Sponsor Borden Ladner Gervais LLP. Programme Sponsors and Donors Gaz Métro, Enbridge and NAC Friends - Quebec. Media partners are Gesca Limitée, notably through La Presse, Le Soleil and Le Droit, and the National Post.

A distinguishing feature of any National Arts Centre Orchestra tour is educational outreach to children and youth. These outreach activities are opportunities for Music Director Pinchas Zukerman and musicians of the Orchestra to step off the stage and into schools and classrooms to teach, encourage and inspire students, and to leave a real and lasting imprint.

The education events include instrumental masterclasses for advanced students led by Pinchas Zukerman and musicians of the NAC Orchestra; instrumental coaching sessions in schools; school concert-demonstrations by the NAC Musicians in the Schools String Quintet; sectional and full rehearsals with school and youth orchestras; teachers clinics; an Alma Mater round table at McGill University; and pre-concert lobby performances by local youth choirs. Additional special projects include a First Nations Recorder Project with NACO brass musicians at Mashteuiatsh; and a residency with Jean-Philippe Tremblay in his hometown of Chicoutimi. Over 40 partners are engaged in helping to present these outreach activities.

The NAC’s latest teacher resource kit, Vivaldi and the Four Seasons, will be distributed to all elementary schools in Quebec. The Quebec Tour website to be found at NACOtour.ca will include educational activities as well as daily web journals, a photo log, a daily student blog, and more.

“National Arts Centre Orchestra tours provide opportunities for Canadians to hear the musicians live in concert and to participate in the NAC’s excellent music education experiences, all in their own communities,” said Peter Herrndorf, NAC president and CEO. “Touring also gives us the opportunity to work with incredible local music and music education partners. We are grateful to them and to our corporate partners and donors for making this tour possible.”

Pinchas Zukerman said: “I’m thrilled to be performing in Quebec communities on tour with the National Arts Centre Orchestra. To hear this Orchestra play Brahms Symphony No. 2 makes me very proud and I’m looking forward to sharing this with audiences in Quebec. I’m also delighted to be featuring Jacques Hétu's Symphony No. 3, a piece I have long admired. As with all our tours, I’m especially looking forward to discovering and nurturing talented young musicians through our many educational outreach activities.”

“We are proud to be the Major Sponsor of the 2006 National Arts Centre Orchestra Performance and Education Tour to Quebec and the Québec Scene to be held in the spring 2007,” said Guy Pratte, partner at the law firm Borden Ladner Gervais LLP.

Concert Repertoire
The National Arts Centre Orchestra will perform Brahms’ radiant Symphony No. 2 at each concert, which on the occasion of its recent pre-tour performance at the National Arts Centre prompted Ottawa Citizen critic to say “the conductor had the big picture wonderfully in focus and the orchestra delivered the goods with beautiful, responsive playing”. Audiences will also have the opportunity to hear Pinchas Zukerman, one of the leading string players in the world, as violin soloist in Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3. The concerts will also include Symphony No. 3 by renowned Quebec composer Jacques Hétu.

Student Matinees
The NAC Orchestra will again bring its highly successful recipe for interactive Student Matinees on tour to Quebec. In Chicoutimi and Domaine Forget (St-Irénée) as well as pre-tour in Gatineau, the Orchestra will present Allez Mozart! (Let’s Go Mozart!) featuring actor-musician Peter Duschenes, the Artistic Director of Platypus Theatre, as co-host in the role of Mozart. The matinees will also feature performances by NAC Orchestra violinist Jessica Linnebach, a graduate of the NAC Young Artists Programme, and by 21-year-old violinist Dominic Guilbault, the winner of the 2006 Festival de musique du Royaume in Chicoutimi. The matinees in Gatineau and Domaine Forget will be conducted by Boris Brott, the NAC Orchestra’s Principal Youth and Family Conductor. In Chicoutimi, they will be led by Jean-Philippe Tremblay, the NAC Orchestra’s former Apprentice Conductor, and a graduate of the NAC Conductors Programme. Teachers will be given the NAC’s Allez Mozart! teacher guide to prepare for the matinees which include the opportunity for students to play along on recorders with the NAC Orchestra to the theme of Mozart’s Sonata in A.

The Mashteuiatsh Recorder Project: Vivaldi and the Fifth Season
Over an eight-week period, selected school children from Amishk elementary school in Mashteuiatsch, located in the scenic region of Lac-St-Jean, will prepare a musical excerpt from Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons to sing and play on recorder and will also create a performance offering representative of their own cultural tradition. Aline Guérin, a local recorder specialist, is giving three recorder clinics in Mashteuiatsh throughout the months of September and October to ten teachers so that they can prepare their classes (a total of 120 children in grades 4-6 at Amishk School). The Project will culminate in a music-sharing session with eight members of the NAC Orchestra brass section on Friday, November 17 in front of a live audience at Église Notre-Dame-Immaculée in Roberval, Quebec. The National Arts Centre will provide the Vivaldi and the Four Seasons teacher resource kit (see below) to each of the participating schools. The Mashteuiatsh Recorder Project is a sequel to the highly successful “Kispiox Music Project” on the BC Tour in 2004 and the “Prince Albert Grand Council Recorder Project” on tour in Saskatchewan in 2005. Yamaha Music is donating recorders for the children as well as recorder method books to use as a teaching aid.

Teacher Resource Kit: Vivaldi and the Four Seasons
The NAC teacher resource kit, Vivaldi and the Four Seasons, will be distributed to 8,650 elementary schools in Quebec in November 2006. The 32-page kit includes an original children’s story written especially for the NAC by C.J. Taylor, an author of Mohawk origin, and was illustrated by George Littlechild of the Cree Nation. It also includes a complimentary copy of the CBC Records Vivaldi: Four Seasons CD featuring Pinchas Zukerman and the NAC Orchestra. The kit which also contains cross-curricular links to content-related topics such as Climate Change, can be used by generalist classroom teachers to teach music and other curricular subjects. It will also be used as the curriculum unit to help teachers prepare students for Mashteuiatsh Recorder Project. The Vivaldi and the Four Seasons kit has received the Curriculum Services Canada Seal of Quality.

www.NACOtour.ca
The NAC Orchestra’s Quebec Tour will have its own dedicated tour website to be found at www.NACOtour.ca. It will include daily video journals, a photo log of the tour, podcasts in both French and English, “Be a Music Critic”, the Quebec Musical Culture Treasure Hunt, and video archives of educational activities including “The Five Seasons Arts Web Project” with École Amishk.

Student Blogger
Emmanuel Thouin, a student from the Conservatoire de musique de Gatineau, will tour with the Orchestra as the official tour blogger posting daily text in English and French, plus pictures and audio on the Tour website at NACOtour.ca.

Alma Mater Programme
Chicoutimi natives Manuela Milani (violin) and Marjolaine Laroche (assistant principal double bass) will participate in teaching activities in their hometown, as will Murielle Bruneau (double bass) in Trois-Rivières. McGill University graduates including Susan Rupp (violin) and Donald Renshaw (trombone) will return to McGill for a Round Table Q&A.;

Jean-Philippe Tremblay residency in Chicoutimi
Jean-Philippe Tremblay, the NAC Orchestra’s former Apprentice Conductor and a graduate of the NAC Conductors Programme, will return home to Chicoutimi for three days to instruct and conduct the “Rassemblement des cordes” as part of the Chicoutimi Festival of Strings as well as to conduct the NAC Orchestra in two student matinees in the Dufour Auditorium.

Pinchas Zukerman and the National Arts Centre Orchestra
Pinchas Zukerman has for four decades been recognized internationally as one of the world’s greatest string players. His discography contains over 100 titles, and has earned him 21 Grammy nominations and two Grammy awards. Since his appointment as Music Director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra in 1998, he has taken an interest in virtually every aspect of Ottawa’s artistic community while continuing his international career.

Pinchas Zukerman is world-renowned for his dedication to teaching and to the musical development of the next generation of young artists, and he passionately believes that every child should have access to a musical education. He is the driving force behind the national role the National Arts Centre plays in education and community outreach, and in the use of new technology to reach Canadians from coast to coast.

Touring is an important part of the mandate of the National Arts Centre Orchestra which has visited, in its 37-year history, 107 cities in Canada, and 122 cities internationally. The Quebec Tour is Pinchas Zukerman’s eighth tour with the National Arts Centre Orchestra, and seventh since being appointed Music Director in 1998. In 1999 he led the coast-to-coast Canada Tour, followed by Tour 2000 to Israel and Europe, the Atlantic Tour 2002, the United States and Mexico Tour 2003, the British Columbia Tour 2004 and the Alberta-Saskatchewan Tour in 2005. As guest conductor and soloist in 1990, Zukerman led the Orchestra on a European Tour.

Quebec Tour Education Activities

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For more information please contact:
Jane Morris, Communications Officer,
National Arts Centre Orchestra
(613) 947-7000, ext. 335
jmorris@nac-cna.ca