Preview | I Musici Launches Its First Conductor-less, Musician-Driven Season

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On Oct. 9, 2025, at Espace Jax, I Musici opens their 42nd season, with guest cellist Yegor Dyachkov. This season marks their first performing with no conductor and new collective artistic direction. Violist and head of communications Thierry Lavoie-Ladouceur says, “We really wanted to try something new and have a horizontal way of thinking. There’s always been a lot of ideas coming from the musicians, so that’s what motivated the change, taking that risk and saying, ‘Why not try this new model?’”

Solo violinist Julie Triquet, who has played with I Musici for 25 years, says this new direction is “much more creative, makes us more responsible, and we have to learn how to communicate well to respect everybody’s strengths and weaknesses.” Lavoie-Ladouceur says it is “also very empowering for us, especially with what we’ve been through in the last years, to be able to bring forward who we are as persons, as musicians, as an ensemble, to say, ‘This is what we stand for. This is what we want to present the world with.’”

I Musici’s opening concert, Spark, is, according to Dyachkov, an “extended family reunion.” Dyachkov played with I Musici from 1990 to 1995, after being recommended to study with I Musici founder Yuli Turovsky at the University of Montréal by Mstislav Rostropovich. As a new immigrant, he recalls I Musici being “a school of life” that “opened my eyes and ears.”

Yegor Dyachkov. Photo: Elizabeth Delage

The concert’s opening piece, Coups d’archets by Denis Gougeon, was a favourite of Turovsky’s. “It was written for Yuli, who sort of passed the relay to the musicians,” says Dyachkov. “Yuli would be on stage alone playing the solo. And then we would all come together on the stage, join him, and he would pass his cello to the first cello, and start conducting,” adds Triquet. Gougeon is a long-term collaborator, composing six works for I Musici from 1998 to the present.

The concert’s other theme is different ways of working together. The Gougeon gives all the musicians solos, in a form that Dyachkov says “democratizes orchestral playing.” Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme is “a more standard concerto approach, but played communicating with all the musicians simultaneously and letting the music guide us through,” says Dyachkov.

An I Musici favourite, Tchaikovsky’s Serenade in C major, will complete the concert, with Dyachkov moving from soloist to chamber musician within the orchestra. “We played this [Serenade] a lot, and to have somebody new with new ideas, it’s going to be very challenging and interesting,” says Triquet.

The rest of I Musici’s season will feature collaborations with friends old and new, such as harpsichordist Catherine Perrin, kanun player Didem Basar, soprano Andréanne Brisson-Paquin, and Katarina Quartet. Coups d’archets will finish the final concert of the season, which Lavoie-Ladouceur says, “presents the season like a loop, that begins with what I Musici is coming from, and that ends with where I Musici could be going.”