A profoundly luminous concert where the virtuosity of the performers is placed at the service of intimacy. From Arvo Pärt’s Fratres, spiritual and meditative, to Vivaldi and his rediscovered light, this program explores the many facets of grief: memory, absence, sadness, anger, tears, but also movement and the life that continues. Featuring works by Pärt, Marais, Vivaldi, Handel, J.M. Bach and J.S. Bach, performed by Victor Alibert, Mélanie Bourassa and Richard Paré, this concert highlights the rich colors shared between bass clarinets and organ.

With Marais’s Suite in G minor, grief becomes more intimate. Voices answer one another and then separate. Grief is never a linear experience: each person lives it differently, shaped by abandonment, denial, anger, sadness, and acceptance. These movements are not stages; they are states that intersect, return, and transform.

The Prelude, for solo clarinet, brings us back to silence. After the multiplicity of voices, only one remains. A moment of withdrawal, meditation, and return to oneself.

Then, suddenly, movement. Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Cellos awakens the space. The gesture becomes more vivid, more energetic. Life continues, despite everything. Not because the pain has vanished, but because the world itself continues to breathe.

With Handel’s Son nata a lagrimar — “I was born to weep” — the nature of tears changes. They are no longer only an expression of loss: they also become a force that sets us in motion. To weep, to remember, to love still — so many ways of moving forward.

Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater then broadens the perspective. Grief is no longer only that of one person, one family, or one particular story. Through the universal figure of the mother confronted with suffering and the loss of her child, it becomes a shared human experience, an homage to all mothers.

Finally, after traversing different forms of loss, peace emerges with O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde groß, for organ alone. It is not a triumphant ending, for there is no victory over absence, but rather a new way of living alongside grief and allowing memory to exist beside life.

Mélanie Bourassa, clarinet

Victor Alibert clarinette bass clarinet

Richard Paré organ

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Biographies

Mélanie Bourassa

After graduating with First Class Honours from the Conservatoire de musique de Québec, Mélanie Bourassa pursued further studies in Europe and Chicago. She was awarded a Doctor of Musical Studies (DMUS) from Université Laval in 2022. Mélanie teaches at Université Laval and the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal and is an artist for Buffet Crampon and Silverstein. She has built a career both nationally and internationally with the Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Les Violons du Roy, several chamber music ensembles, and as a soloist, including with the ACCB, which she co-founded. She is a recipient of grants from the Conseil des Arts et Lettres du Québec, Domaine Forget and the Guilde des Musiciens (AFM); she won first prize in the Canadian Music Competition in chamber music and a Prix Opus in 2015.

Victor Alibert

Soloist in Orchestre de l’Agora, Victor Alibert participates in the new music creation and collaborates with various artists such as Flore Laurentienne or Patrick Watson. Victor teaches in Cegep St-Laurent. Victor Alibert is also Performer of the Year 2020 (prix Opus). Nominated for Classical Music Album of the Year (JUNOS 2020) and contributed to La jeune fille qui pleurait des perles, Oscar for Best Short Film 2026.

Richard Alibert

Richard Paré, trained at the Conservatoire de musique de Québec where he won three first prizes (organ, harpsichord, chamber music), has also pursued a career as a performer and professor at Université Laval until 2025, where he founded and directed the Atelier de musique baroque. A founding member of Les Violons du Roy, he has participated in numerous international tours, performing notably at Carnegie Hall and the Concertgebouw. Invited by several major orchestras, he was a soloist with the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony and the Chicago Symphony between 2006 and 2011. In 2013, he inaugurated the Casavant organ at the Palais Montcalm, where he became organist-in-residence until 2025. Since 2015, he regularly collaborates with the Royal 22e Régiment Band. Holder of the organ of the St. Martyrs Canadian Church since 1983, he has also made various recordings, including an audio/video project on the organ of the Raoul Jobin hall.

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