Shortly after French violinist Jean-Samuel Bez and Canadian pianist Jean-Luc Therrien met at the Orford Music Festival (Canada) in 2016, they formed their duo J². Less than a year after theiy joined forces, they won the First Absolute Prize in the Luigi Zanuccolli International Competition (Italy). Since then, they have been toured regulary in Europe (France, Austria, Italy) and North America.
Bez and Therrien - who both studied in Austria's greatest music schools - have built a repertoire with a special focus on the virtuosic sonatas of the 19th and 20th century including sonatas by Georges Enescu, Francis Poulenc, Robert Schumann and César Franck. They have also enjoyed working on a variety of smaller and lighter pieces including viennese classics by composers like Fritz Kreisler or lesser known pieces by francophone composers such as Lili Boulanger, Gustave Samazeuilh or André Mathieu.
More recently, the two musicians recorded their first album during a residency at the Delta de Namur (Belgium). The album, consisting of a variety of fantasies for violin and piano by various composers, was launched during a pan-European tour in February and March 2022, followed by a Canadian tour in November 2023. In 2024, they will present their program "Kaleidoscopes" on tour, with 26 dates in Europe, in collaboration with composers Aleksander Peçi, Eugénie Alécian, and Alithéa Ripoll.
Next Tour - Europe 2024
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03.04 Florence, IT
05.04 Rome, IT
06.04 Tirana, AL
08.04 Belgrade, RS
09.04 Pirot, RS
10.04 Nis, RS
11.04 Kragujevac, RS
13.04 Bujak, HU
14.04 Budapest, HU
15.04 Vienna, AT
16.04 Salzburg, AT
18.04 Stegen, DE
19.04 Bremen, DE
20.04 Amsterdam, NL
21.04 Mettmann, DE
23.04 Liège, BE
24.04 Brussels, BE
26.04 Luxembourg, LU
27.04 Grandrupt, FR
28.04 Paris, FR
30.04 Auxerre, FR
01.05 Pontarlier, FR
02.05 Geneva, CH
03.05 Lausanne, CH
Discography
Fantaisies (2022)
CD - Klarthe (KLA148)
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music by Lili Boulanger, Robert Schumann, Eugénie Alécian, Fritz Kreisler, Arnold Schoenberg, André Mathieu, Olivier Messiaen, Gustave Samazeuilh
Jean-Luc Therrien, piano
Named one of Canada's 30 hot classical musicians under 30 for 2020 by CBC Music, Quebec born pianist Jean-Luc Therrien has been an active soloist in Canada and abroad. In the later years, he toured across Quebec and the Maritimes as part of the Jeunesses Musicales Canada’s Emerging Artists Concerts on tour, with a program which included one of his own piano transcriptions (composed after Franz Liszt's symphonic poem Les Préludes). A few months later, he also made his orchestral debut in Japan with the Sendai Philharmonic Orchestra, performing Beethoven’s fourth piano concerto.
As a chamber musician, Jean-Luc has collaborated with several ensembles including the Quatuor Claudel-Canimex. In 2017, he formed the Duo J², with French violinist Jean-Samuel Bez, with whom he toured in Eastern Canada and Europe. Together, they also won the Grand Prize at the Luigi Zanuccoli International Competition in Italy. More recently, he performed a series of recitals in Toronto with violinist Mai Tategami and cellist Zlatomir Fung. Over the years, Jean-Luc has also stood out in many competitions such as the Orford Music Award Contest, the Glenn Gould School Concerto Competition (winner), the Mauro Paolo Monopoli Prize International Piano Competition in Italy (3rd prize and audience prize) and the CMC Stepping Stone (3rd prize), as well as being awarded several prizes like the Wilfrid-Pelletier Scholarship, the Governor General of Canada’s Academic Medal and a grant from the Canadian Council for the Arts for musical projects in Europe.
