LAUREATE

Motivated and hungry for new experiences, Measha Brueggergosman-Lee’s career embraces an impressive breadth of musical styles and performance platforms, ranging from classical song recitals to opera, contemporary music, and beyond. She began her career with a deep commitment to art song, performing innovative recital programs at prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall, Washington’s Kennedy Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, the Konzerthaus and Musikverein in Vienna, Madrid’s Teatro Real, and the Schwarzenberg, Edinburgh, Verbier, and Bergen Festivals. Her collaborators have included such celebrated pianists as Justus Zeyen, Roger Vignoles, Julius Drake, and Simon Lepper. On the operatic stage, Measha has taken on roles including Giulietta and Antonia in Les contes d’Hoffmann, Elettra in Idomeneo, Jenny in Weill’s Mahagonny, Emilia Marty in Janáček’s Věc Makropulos, Hannah in Miroslav Srnka’s Make No Noise, and Sister Rose in Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking. She recently returned to Carnegie Hall with the New World Symphony, sang Elettra with Toronto’s Opera Atelier, and gave a recital at London’s Barbican Centre. She has performed with many of the world’s top orchestras—including the Orchestre de Paris, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, and New World Symphony—under the baton of conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Michael Tilson Thomas, Franz Welser-Möst, Sir Andrew Davis, Gustavo Dudamel, and Daniel Harding. Her debut album Surprise (Deutsche Grammophon) was met with critical acclaim, followed by the award-winning Night and Dreams, and a Grammy-nominated recording of Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder with Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra. Offstage, Measha is also a writer, TV personality, and advocate. Her memoir Something Is Always On Fire was published by HarperCollins, and she actively promotes music education across Canada.

Pianist, writer, and arts leader Pierre-André Doucet is recognized as a singular voice in Canada’s artistic landscape. Noted for the emotional depth and refined control of his performances, he has appeared as a soloist, chamber musician, and vocal collaborator across North America, Europe, and South Africa, as well as aboard Holland America Line ships as a Lincoln Center Stage artist. An active artistic curator, he serves as Artistic Director of Barachois Summer Music, in his native New Brunswick, and steered the Frye Festival—Atlantic Canada’s largest literary festival—through a time of transition as Interim Executive Director from 2021 to 2022. In 2023, he was also the artistic director of Une maison traversée at Montréal’s Festival international de littérature. He is currently the coordinator of the McGill-UdeM Piano-Vocal Arts Residency, a unique program which he also ompleted as part of its first cohort (2022-2023). Winner of the Knigge Piano Competition and the Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition (with soprano Alexandra Smither), he has also received prizes at the Prix d’Europe, the Women’s Musical Club of Toronto’s Career Development Award, and the Ibiza International Piano Competition. A celebrated author, Doucet has published two critically acclaimed books with Prise de parole—Sorta comme si on était déjà là (2012) and Des dick pics sous les étoiles (2020)—and became the first writer to be a three-time finalist in literature at the Jeux de la Francophonie (Beirut 2009, Nice 2013, Kinshasa 2023). His work has also appeared in Ancrages, Art Song Canada Magazine, Impossible Archetypes, Opera Canada, and Voix plurielles. Doucet holds a Doctorate in Piano Performance from the Université de Montréal and a Graduate Diploma in Collaborative Piano Performance from McGill University. A former resident at the Franz-Schubert-Institut, Music Academy of the West, and Tanglewood Music Center, he has been a guest professor at l’Université de Montréal and is well in demand as an adjudicator across the country. His artistic projects have received support from the Canada Council for the Arts, CALQ, the New Brunswick Arts Board, SSHRC, and FRQSC.