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Montreal, September 19 – Guillaume Lombart, President of ATMA Classique, is delighted to announce the signing of an exclusive recording contract with the multi award-winning Innu soprano Élisabeth St-Gelais on the ATMA Classique label. “Her exceptional voice, remarkable talent and dazzling career debut caught my attention, and I was inspired to help develop her career with this exclusive contract,” says Lombart.
ATMA Classique will produce three albums over a six-year period with Élisabeth St-Gelais. The first album will be devoted to Duparc, Chausson, and Poulenc, masters of French melody. St-Gelais will be accompanied by pianist Louise Pelletier, and the recording sessions will take place in March 2024 at the Domaine Forget concert hall in St-Irénée, Charlevoix.
Hailing from the community of Pessamit, Québec, Élisabeth St-Gelais takes pride in sharing her Innu culture through her mission as an artist. In 2023, St-Gelais won the Prix d’Europe and the Premier Prix 26-30 at the Festival Classival. In 2022, she received major national recognition as the grand prize winner of McGill University’s prestigious Wirth Vocal Prize and the 19-30 Grand Prize at the Canimex Canadian Music Competition. She was also named Révélation Radio-Canada Classique 2023-2024, and was selected for the #CBC30Under30 list as a prominent Indigenous opera artist under the age of 30. Elisabeth St-Gelais is the only Indigenous artist named as a 2023 Young Lyric Ambassador with Théâtre Lyrichorégra.
St-Gelais completed her Master’s degree in Voice and Opera at McGill University earlier this year and made her European debut as Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus at the Berlin Opera Academy in 2022. She has performed throughout her home province and across Canada with the Canadian Opera Company, Orchestre symphonique du Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean, Orchestre Symphonique de la Côte-Nord, Orchestre I Musici de Montréal, and Orchestre de l’Agora.
Élisabeth St-Gelais’s upcoming performances include a concert on September 30 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. As part of the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation and the Journées de la culture, she will sing a work commissioned for the occasion by Anishinaabe composer Barbara Assiginaak, based on a text by Innu poet Maya Cousineau Mollen.
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