When Held To Light

Violinist Isabelle Fournier is a shining star of the classical music scene in Canada’s Maritime provinces. Born in Moncton, New Brunswick, she became the youngest student ever admitted to the Royal College of Music in London at age 16. She further honed her craft at the prestigious Juilliard School in New York, studying under legendary pedagogue Dorothy DeLay and working closely with the Juilliard String Quartet. A laureate of numerous awards both locally and internationally, Isabelle has established a distinguished career as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player across North America, Europe, and Asia. For several years, she was a valued member of the English Chamber Orchestra and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. She has performed multiple times for the British Royal Family and was invited to play at Chequers, the British Prime Minister’s country residence, during the 1991 G7 Summit. In 2002, Isabelle returned to the Maritimes to continue an active musical life based in Halifax. Today, she holds the position of associate principal second violin with Symphony Nova Scotia and thrives as a soloist, chamber musician, teacher, adjudicator, and music director. Chamber music remains her true passion, and she has been a guest artist at renowned festivals including Aldeburgh, Cambridge University International Chamber Music Series, Prussia Cove seminars, Aspen Music Festival, Banff Centre for the Arts, Scotia Festival, and Under the Spire. Her orchestral career also includes collaborations with the City of London Sinfonia, Britten Sinfonia, Northern Sinfonia, National Ballet of Canada Orchestra, McGill Chamber Orchestra, Festival de Lanaudière Orchestra, and Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony.

Carl Philippe Gionet is a pianist, multidisciplinary artist, and writer based in Acadie. Holder of a doctorate from the Université de Montréal, he is highly sought after across Canada and Europe as a soloist, collaborative pianist, and pedagogue. In 2013, he founded Musique sur mer en Acadie, dedicated to classical music education in francophone minority communities. A visual artist working in painting and video installation, he made his European debut in 2024 in Italy and Iceland. As a writer published by Prise de parole, he was a finalist for the Prix Antonine-Maillet–Acadie Vie. His album Tu me voyais (Leaf Music, 2022) features his Douze chansons folkloriques acadiennes.

Susan Sayle is a fixture on the Canadian classical music scene, known as "the violist with a sound that makes everyone she plays with sound better!" Trained in Victoria and at McGill University under the legendary Steven Kondaks, she joined Symphony Nova Scotia in 1986, rose to Principal Violist in 1994, and served there until 2024. Throughout her career, Susan has performed with numerous ensembles and festivals across Eastern Canada and in France, and has appeared as soloist with SNS on multiple occasions. She has taught at Dalhousie University, coached the Nova Scotia and New Brunswick Youth Orchestras, and has been frequently broadcast on CBC Radio and Television. For 30 years, she has proudly played with the Charlottetown Festival Orchestra every summer in Prince Edward Island.

Éloïse LeBlanc was born in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal and now lives in Cap-Acadie. In 2022, she published Le hoquet en pulpes with Éditions de La maison en feu. Her texts have appeared in journals including Estuaire, Nyx, Saturne, and Les Éphélides, while others remain in her illustrated notebooks. She cultivates hypersensitivity, shares her writing in a low voice, and nourishes a fascination for coastal maritime textures. Drawn to miniature worlds and ways of magnifying them, her writing often searches for a poetry that calls to the collective, reaches toward others, and sketches in pencil the possibility of cohabitation.

Montreal-born cellist Marc Labranche enjoys a flourishing career as a chamber musician, soloist, and orchestral musician. He has performed at Carnegie Hall (New York), Symphony Hall (Boston), the Barbican and Royal Albert Hall (London), the Konzerthaus (Berlin), and the Grosses Festspielhaus (Salzburg), among others. As a soloist, he has performed concertos by Saint-Saëns, Haydn, and Vivaldi across France, Spain, England, Italy, and Canada. He has shared the stage with the London Haydn Quartet, Arditti Quartet, and St. Lawrence String Quartet. Since returning to Quebec after years abroad, he is regularly invited by several orchestras and has been a permanent member of the Orchestre symphonique de Trois-Rivières since 2019.