Performers
Geneviève Gilardeau, a native of Québec, studied violin at the Université de Montréal, the Conservatoire du Québec, and the Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory in Toronto. A member of Québec City’s chamber orchestra Les Violons du Roy from 1995-1998, Geneviève became a core member of Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra in 1999. She also serves regularly as concertmistress of the Aradia Baroque Ensemble and makes frequent appearances with the Toronto Consort and with several Montreal-based ensembles, including Ensemble Masques and Les voix humaines. She was a member of the period-instrument Windermere String Quartet for several seasons, and has also appeared with Via Salzburg. Geneviève is frequently featured as a soloist with Tafelmusik, including in concertos by J.S. Bach (Brandenburg #4), Vivaldi (recorded on Analekta’s Baroque Feast) and Leclair (on CBC’s Mozart Noir). She is forever grateful to her teachers Jean-François Rivest and Jeanne Lamon for their support and for having shared so generously their passion for Baroque music.
Lucas Harris began his musical life as a jazz guitarist in his hometown of Phoenix, Arizona. After graduating summa cum laude from Pomona College, he studied for a year in Milan, Italy as one of the first Marco Fodella Foundation scholars and then at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen. Lucas now keeps a busy schedule as a continuo player for dozens of Baroque ensembles across North America. He is the regular lutenist with Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and is based in Toronto since 2004. Lucas teaches each summer at Oberlin Conservatory's Baroque Performance Institute and the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute, and has also taught for Amherst Early Music, the International Baroque Institute at Longy, and the New York Continuo Collective. He is a founder of the Toronto Continuo Collective, a weekly class and performing ‘pluck band’ dedicated to learning the art of seventeenth-century accompaniment. Some recent projects included a lute concerto program for CBC radio’s Young Artist Series, a solo recital for the Minnesota Guitar Society, a debut solo CD, as well as duo recitals and a recording with the Chinese pipa virtuoso Wen Zhao. Lucas was music director for a production of Cavalli’s La Calisto for the Opera Program at Ohio State University, and has also been invited as guest director with the Pacific Baroque Orchestra in Vancouver. He was praised for his work with Les voix humaines in Montréal: “The revelation of the concert was the Torontonian lutenist Lucas Harris, who weaved a poetic thread through his infinitely subtle interventions. The sweetness and patience of his playing . . . was astonishing.” (Le Devoir)
