About ARC
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ARC - Artists of The Royal Conservatory - is the institution's ensemble-in-residence and is made up of the Glenn Gould School's senior faculty with the participation of its most exceptional students and graduates. It is an international ambassador for the Conservatory and promotes it through concerts in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Asia, and through its acclaimed recordings for Sony Masterworks (on the RCA Red Seal label). It collaborates with a range of artists, most recently with the pianist Leon Fleisher, the novelist Yann Martel, actors Saul Rubinek and R.H. Thompson, and composers Omar Daniel and Vincent Ho.
The ensemble plays a leading role in unearthing repertoire that has been ignored
due to political changes or shifts in musical fashion - in particularly works
that were lost because of the upheavals of the Second World War. ARC has received
accolades from most of the world’s major music journals and magazines. Julian
Haylock in The Strad (June 2008) writes of ARC's most recent recording: “Music
of this quality cries out for exemplary musicianship and the ARC Ensemble sets
the skin rippling at every turn with its ear-tingling corporate intonation
and magical phrasing, caught to perfection by award-winning producer David
Frost.”
Both of ARC's two CDs, On the Threshold of Hope and Right Through the Bone, have been nominated for Grammy Awards in the category of Best Chamber Music Recording. They are regularly played on networks around the world, and ARC's concerts have been broadcast on National Public Radio in the U.S., and on public radio in Europe, Poland and Hungary.
ARC has become one of Canada’s leading cultural exports, raising international
awareness of the Glenn Gould School's superb faculty and Canada's rich musical
life. The Ensemble’s concerts are meticulously researched and assembled with
rich supporting materials and are often augmented with lectures on the life
and context of the composers, or included as part of larger-themed festivals.
Its acclaimed series Music in Exile, which explores the music of composers
whose lives and careers were changed forever by the Holocaust and World War
II, has been presented with huge critical success in New York, London, Budapest,
and Toronto, and has led to concerts at the Kennedy Center in Washington and
performances in Rome, Sweden and Poland.
James Conlon, Music Director of the Los Angeles Opera and the Ravinia Festival, and a major force in the resuscitation of lost twentieth century repertoire recently agreed to become ARC's Honorary Chairman. The ensemble's Artistic Director is the guitarist Simon Wynberg. |