Montreal Chamber Music Festival Presents Health and Wellness Concerts

Last year, the festival founded the concert series in gratitude for Montreal's CHUM

In 2022, the Montreal Chamber Music Festival initiated Health and Wellness Concerts at the CHUM (University of Montreal Health Centre) hospital in Montreal.

As one of the earliest victims Covid -19 the Festival’s Artistic Director, Denis Brott fought a long and life-threatening battle with Covid in March 2020. He was on a respirator in an induced coma and spent a total of 45 days in hospital. Thanks to the care he received at CHUM his life was saved.

In gratitude, Denis created a concert series for the hospital to share music’s healing powers with patients and healthcare workers alike. These concerts were performed live before an audience of 200 at the hospital’s Péladeau Amphitheatre and were recorded for broadcast on closed-circuit television in patients' rooms and throughout the hospital network.

This initiative has become an important element of the Festival’s ongoing mission to bring live chamber music to a diverse audience.

Premiered on The Violin Channel on  April 17, one of the Health and Wellness concerts featured works by Arensky, Debussy, Ravel — with harpists Valérie Milot, violinists Giora Schmidt and Eva Lesage-Sokolovic, violist Sebastian Gonzalez Mora, cellists Denis Brott and Noémie Raymond-Friset, flutist Arianne Brisson, and clarinetist Martin Carpentier.

The concert can be viewed below:

On April 24, a concert of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons will be streamed here. The concert will feature violin soloist Kevin Zhu, violinists Marianne Dugal, Ana Drobac, Anaïs Saucier-Lafond, and Ryan Truby, violist Lambert Chen, cellist Denis Brott, double-bassist William Deslauriers-Allain, and harpsichordist Luc Beauséjour.

The performance was recorded live on December 8^th, 2022 at the Pierre-Péladeau Amphitheatre, University of Montreal Health Centre (CHUM), Montreal.