Jean Deslauriers facts for kids
Jean Deslauriers (born June 24, 1909 – died May 30, 1978) was a talented Canadian conductor, violinist, and composer. He worked with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) for over 40 years. He led orchestras for movies, TV shows, and radio programs. Jean Deslauriers also conducted for many orchestras and opera companies across Canada. He was known for being a careful and skilled conductor. He was good at leading concerts, operas, and lighter music. His most famous works are a piece for strings called Prélude and a song named La Musique des yeux. He was the father of the singer Yolande Deslauriers-Husaruk.
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Early Life and Musical Training
Jean Deslauriers was born in Montreal, Canada. He was a very gifted child, often called a child prodigy. He started his career as a concert violinist when he was a young teenager. He learned to play the violin from teachers like Émile Taranto and Camille Couture.
From 1924 to 1929, he went on yearly concert tours. He performed across Canada and the United States with singers Paul Dufault and Joseph Saucier. Jean also studied other music skills. He learned about orchestration from Claude Champagne. He studied counterpoint and instrumentation with Auguste Descarries. He also learned harmony and solfège from Romain-Octave Pelletier I. In the early 1930s, he worked as a violinist and conductor on cruise ships.
Working with the CBC
In 1935, Jean Deslauriers joined the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He played with them for ten years. In 1936, he started working for CBC Radio in Montreal as a conductor. He led orchestras for popular radio shows. These included Radio-Concerts canadiens and Théâtre lyrique Molson.
As television became more common, he also conducted for CBC TV programs. Some of these shows were L'Heure du concert and Sérénade. From 1937 to 1957, he conducted the orchestra for the show Serenade for Strings. This show won an award called the LaFlèche Trophy. After World War II, he started arranging and conducting music for many CBC films.
In 1954, he conducted one of the first opera broadcasts on CBC TV. It was a televised version of Gioachino Rossini's The Barber of Seville. He conducted several more opera broadcasts for the CBC. These included Monsieur Beaucaire (1954) by André Messager. He also conducted Roméo et Juliette (1971) by Charles Gounod and Madama Butterfly (1977) by Giacomo Puccini.
Guest Conducting and Teaching
During the 1960s and 1970s, Jean Deslauriers was a very busy guest conductor. He led symphony orchestras in many Canadian cities. These included Montreal, Quebec City, Toronto, and Vancouver.
In 1966, he conducted the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. They performed the very first show of Three Episodes for Orchestra by Robert Turner. In 1968, he led the CBC Symphony Orchestra in the first performance of Prismes-Anamorphoses by François Morel.
He also worked as a conductor for opera shows. He was the music director of the Théâtre lyrique du Québec from 1967 to 1970. He was also the assistant conductor of the Opéra du Québec from 1972 to 1975. In the 1970s, he was a guest conductor for the Canadian Opera Company and the Edmonton Opera. He also taught music at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Trois-Rivières. There, he was the first conductor of the school's orchestra.
Legacy and Recognition
Jean Deslauriers never stopped working. He passed away in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec in 1978 when he was 68 years old. After his death, his large collection of music scores was given to the library at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal. His personal papers are now kept at the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. In 1975, a concert hall in Montreal called Plateau Hall was renamed. It became the Salle Jean-Deslauriers to honor him.
