Jean Deslauriers

Jean Deslauriers (24 June 1909 – 30 May 1978) was a Canadian conductor, violinist, and composer. As a conductor he had a long and fruitful partnership with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; conducting orchestras for feature films and television and radio programs for more than 40 years. He also worked as a guest conductor with orchestras and opera companies throughout Canada and served on the conducting staff of the Opéra du Québec. The Canadian Encyclopedia describes him as "a conductor with a sober but efficient technique, who was always faithful to the written score [and] equally at ease conducting concerts, opera, and lighter repertoire." His best-known compositions are his Prélude for strings and the song, La Musique des yeux. He is the father of soprano Yolande Deslauriers-Husaruk.

Born in Montreal, Deslauriers was a child prodigy and began his career as a concert violinist as a young teenager. He studied the violin with Émile Taranto and Camille Couture. He notably gave annual concert tours with singers Paul Dufault and Joseph Saucier in Canada and the United States between 1924-1929. He also studied with Claude Champagne (orchestration) Auguste Descarries (counterpoint and instrumentation), Romain-Octave Pelletier I (harmony and solfège) between 1918-1923. During the early 1930s he worked as a violinist and conductor aboard cruise ships.

In 1935 Deslauriers became a member of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra with whom he played for the next decade. In 1936 he began working for CBC Radio in Montreal as a conductor, conducting orchestras for such programs as Radio-Concerts canadiens, Théâtre lyrique Molson, and Concerts d'opéras among others. As television became a more established medium he also conducted for CBC TV programs like L'Heure du concert, Sérénade, and Concerts populaires. He notably conducted the orchestra for the LaFlèche Trophy Award winning radio and television program Serenade for Strings from 1937-1957. Following World War II he began arranging and conducting the scores for many films for the CBC. In 1954 he conducted one of the first opera broadcasts by CBC TV with a televised version of Gioachino Rossini's The Barber of Seville. He conducted several more opera broadcasts for the CBC, including performances of André Messager's Monsieur Beaucaire (1954), Charles Gounod's Roméo et Juliette (1971) and Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly (1977).

...
Wikipedia