Marc Couroux
Pianist Marc Couroux is one of Canada's leading interpreters of 20th-century music. He has been acclaimed as "the Glenn Gould of contemporary music".
Marc Couroux was born in Montréal in 1970. Coming from a background in humanities and mathematics, he devoted himself to music at the age of 17. From 1989 to 1994, he worked with pianist Louis-Philippe Pelletier at McGill University in Montréal, where he obtained his Master's Degree in 1994.
He has been awarded numerous study and career development grants from both the Québec and Canadian governments. In 1996, Marc Couroux was awarded the Prix Québec-Flandres which resulted in an invitation from the Flemish community to give a recital in Brussels in November 1996, as part of the Société Philharmonique series.
He has been especially acclaimed for his remarkable renditions of Night Fantasies by Elliott Carter, Evryali by Iannis Xenakis and the Études pour piano by György Ligeti, of which he gave the North-American premiere with the Société de Musique Contemporaine du Québec in February 1996. He has worked extensively with American composer Roger Reynolds at both 1994 and 1995 June in Buffalo Festivals, especially on his works Variation and Fantasy.
His extensive repertoire also includes works by Ambrosini, Brégent, Cage, Cherney, Donatoni, Gonneville, Lindberg, Messiaen, Nancarrow, Rzewski, Schönberg, Stockhausen, Szymanski, Tremblay and Vivier.
In 1994 he gave the world premieres of two works written especially for him: Envolée by Sean Ferguson and Variations by James Harley. In 1995 he premiered works by Marko Ciciliani, James Harley and Renaud de Putter. He was soloist with the McGill Symphony Orchestra in the North-American premiere of Bengt Hambræus' Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in October 1995. In March 1996 he presented a recital of Canadian and Belgian works at the Ars Musica festival in Brussels. In June he performed the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra by György Ligeti with the CBC Vancouver Orchestra. In November 1996 he premiered works by the finalists in the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne's "Forum '96" as well as Tombeau, a large-scale piano work by Brian Cherney. Upcoming events in 1997 include the premiere of Sean Ferguson's Piano Concerto with the SMCQ ensemble and the North-American premieres of Folklore I-IV by Michael Finnissy, Tract by Richard Barrett and Kranichtänze II by Brian Ferneyhough.
In upcoming seasons he will be premiering new works by Claudio Ambrosini, Denys Bouliane, Ian Crutchley, Michael Finnissy, Michel Gonneville, Jean Lesage, Eric Marty, Yannick Plamondon, John Rea, Roger Reynolds, François Rose, Rodney Sharman, Paul Steenhuisen and Luke Stoneham.
Marc Couroux was Artist-in-Residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts in the Fall of 1995 and at the Universities of Princeton and Rutgers in Spring 1996, a distinction bestowed on him by the Canada Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. He was resident pianist at the 1996 Domaine Forget Summer Course for New Music in the north of Québec.
He is also developing an alternate career as music writer and lecturer, having already published a seminal article on Evryali by Xenakis in the Université de Montréal periodical Circuit and delivering lectures at the State Universities of New York at Stony Brook and Buffalo. A book on selected aesthetic and pragmatic issues in post-1945 piano music will be completed in the coming years.
Marc Couroux is represented worldwide by Latitude 45 Arts Promotion (Barbara Scales, agent).
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