Popular Artists on this website
ARC Ensemble
Established in 2002, the ARC Ensemble (Artists of The Royal Conservatory) has quickly become one of Canada’s leading cultural ambassadors. The group has a core membership of piano, strings, and clarinet – all the players are senior faculty members of the Conservatory’s Glenn Gould School – which is supplemented by guest artists drawn from the organisation’s most exceptional students and alumni. The Ensemble has performed in major venues throughout Canada, the United States, Europe, and Asia. Both its first two recordings, On the Threshold of Hope and Right through the Bone, dedicated respectively to music by Mieczysław Weinberg and Julius Röntgen, were nominated for Grammy Awards. It plays a leading role in unearthing repertoire that has been neglected due to political suppression or shifts in musical fashion, and its work has received unanimous acclaim from the world’s cultural press. The Ensemble’s acclaimed Music in Exile series, which revives the music of the émigré composers of the 1930s, has been presented in Tel Aviv, New York, London, Budapest, and Toronto, and drawn renewed attention to works by Walter Braunfels, Adolf Busch, Franz Reizenstein, Robert Kahn, Szymon Laks, Mátyás Seiber, and Mikhail Gnesin, among many others. In addition to giving master-classes and mentoring, the ARC Ensemble is preparing a series of short educational films that explore the lives and music of suppressed composers. Its Honorary Chairman is the conductor James Conlon.