(Supplied)

By Josh Hall | @Vancan19

bonne chance!

Juno nomination comes calling again for Red Deer Symphony Orchestra’s Claude Lapalme

Feb 12, 2025 | 8:00 AM

Claude Lapalme, long-time music director with the Red Deer Symphony Orchestra, is once again part of a Juno Award-nominated project.

Lapalme served as arranger on Marie Hubert: Fille du Roy, by celebrated Canadian soprano Karina Gauvin, which is nominated for Classical Album of the Year (Small Ensemble).

Gauvin is especially known for her interpretation of Baroque music, the same genre in which Lapalme is particularly esteemed.

The album, which also includes contributions from Étienne Lafrance, Pentaèdre, Pierre McLean, Molinari Quartet, and Valérie Milot is nominated alongside:

Known To Dreamers: Black Voices in Canadian Art Song Canadian Art Song Project Centrediscs*Canadian Music Centre/Naxos
Rituæls collectif9 Analekta*Naxos/The Orchard
East is East Infusion Baroque Leaf*Naxos
Kevin Lau: Under a Veil of Stars St. John–Mercer–Park Trio Leaf*Naxo

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Lapalme was previously nominated and won a Juno in 2023 with his group Rosa Barocca for their album Early Italian Cello Concertos — in the same category.

Speaking with rdnewsNOW, Lapalme says though he obviously isn’t the lead on this album, the nomination still means a great deal.

“Over the course of several years, she [Gauvin] had this idea that really crystallized during COVID when she was in isolation. She made this bubble with a pianist in Montreal named Pierre McLean, and they would get together, once a week, maybe twice, and some of the stuff they would go through were folk songs, especially from a collection that was compiled in Quebec over the course of a couple generations for consumption by families, [and] amateur players,” Lapalme explained.

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“[This was] parlour-type stuff, a collection of folk songs and some original songs in the style of folk songs called ‘Les bonnes chansons’ — or ‘The Beautiful Songs.’ Some of them were really excellent arrangements for piano and voice, so she approached me to see if they could be used for the basis of new arrangements where the beginning of the song could be a straight orchestration of the first verse, but then go in different directions in terms of colour, narrative and story-telling using instruments.”

Claude Lapalme in 2023 with his first Juno Award. (Supplied)

On the album, they went on to include a five-string quintet, a woodwind quintet, a piano and a harp, among others.

“I spent several months working and arranging select songs, and these songs she put in a particular order in order to make a show,” added Lapalme, who’s been with Red Deer Symphony Orchestra since 1990.

They are now trying to take said show to France.

“Each song corresponds to a place in the narrative of a life, and that life is one of her [Gauvin’s] first ancestors who came to Quebec from France — Marie Hubert.”

Lapalme, Gauvin et al. won’t know if they’re winners until the Junos are presented in Vancouver on March 30.

Between now and then, Lapalme and wife Janet Kuschak, who is a cellist with RDSO and Rosa Barocca — therefore a Juno winner in her own right — are headed to Hong Kong to adjudicate for the Hong Kong Schools Music and Speech Festival.

Lapalme will also be back on stage with the RDSO this Thursday, Feb. 13 for Roll Over, Beethoven!, then March 29 for ‘If We Had a Million Dollars,’ and the 2024-25 season closes out May 24 with Symphonic Storytelling.

The full list of 2025 Juno Awards nominees is at junoawards.ca.

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