Meet Bénédicte Lauzière, Canada's next violin superstar. Lauzière is one of CBC Music's Next! artists for 2013. Next! presents eight rising Canadian stars in classical music, recorded for broadcast on CBC Radio 2's In Concert. Below you can learn about Lauzière, watch her perform and watch CBC Music's interview with her.
Lauzière took up the violin at age five, eventually studying with Helmut Lipsky at the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal from 2001 to 2009. In 2012 she completed her bachelor of music under the tutelage of Jonathan Crow at McGill University, where she was awarded the Lloyd–Carr Harris scholarship. She has since relocated to New York, presently studying with Masao Kawasaki at the Juilliard School with the support of the C.V. Starr Scholarship and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Lauzière has performed many of the major violin concerti, including those of Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Korngold, with orchestras such as the McGill Sinfonietta, l'Orchestre Symphonique du Québec and the Western Michigan University Symphony Orchestra. She has received numerous prizes in her career, among them the Michael Measures Prize (Canada Council, inaugural winner), the silver medal at the Stulberg International String Competition (2010), the Peter Mendell Award (2010) and thrice first prize at the Canadian Music Competition (2006, 2007 and 2008).
Watch an excerpt from CBC Music's exclusive studio session with Lauzière, recorded at Studio 12 in Montreal on Feb. 24, 2013.
We wanted to know more about Lauzière, so we spoke with her. Watch CBC Music's interview video and you'll learn about Lauzière's favourite composers, what she does to get ready for a performance, why she's fearless and how many cats she owns.
Check out Lauzière's artist page here. Watch her complete studio session here.
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