Éric Champagne

Winner of the Opus prize Composer of the Year (2020) and Discovery of the Year (2014), composer Éric Champagne holds a Master’s Degree in Composition from the Université de Montréal. Composers he has studied with include Michel Tétreault, François-Hugues Leclair, Michel Longtin, Denis Gougeon, Luis de Pablo, José Evangelista, John McCabe, and Gary Kulesha.

His music is regularly performed in Quebec, across Canada, and in the United States, Europe, and India by distinguished ensembles and soloists such as the Academic Orchestra of Zurich (Switzerland), symphony orchestras in Montréal, Quebec City, Vancouver and Kitchener-Waterloo, the Orchestre de la Francophonie (Montreal), the Orchestre Symphonique de l’Estuaire (Rimouski), the National Academy Orchestra of Canada (Hamilton), the Toronto Youth Symphony Orchestra, the McGill Wind Symphony, the University of Oklahoma Wind Symphony, the Molinari String Quartet, the Fibonacci Trio, wind quintet Pentaèdre, Zefirino Ensemble (Switzerland) and the percussion ensemble Sixtrum. Having been composer-in-residence of Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain from 2012 to 2014, Éric Champagne continues to be a regular collaborator on a variety of musical and pedagogical projects. He is also composer-in-residence at the Chapelle historique du Bon-Pasteur in Montréal from 2016 to 2018.

More recently, his musical theater adaptation of The Little Prince by Saint-Exupéry - directed by Sophie Cadieux and conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin – was broadcast by Télé-Québec.

Éric Champagne has been awarded numerous prizes and honours including the Prix du CALQ-Création de l’année-Montréal for his First Symphony premiered in March 2014 by the Orchestre Métropolitain, the University of Oklahoma’s Michael Hennagin Memorial Composition Prize for his piece Champ-de-Mars, par jour de lumière, the Prix collégien de musique contemporaine for his orchestral piece Vers les astres, first prize in the composition competition of the Orchestre de l’Université de Montréal, and first prize in the organ composition competition of Sherbrooke’s Ensemble Musica Nova.

Éric Champagne is actively involved in the dissemination of contemporary music and of culture on a broader scale. He is the author of articles, interviews, and reviews published in magazines and journals such as Circuit, L’Opéra revue québécoise d’art lyrique, La Scena musicale, Intersections, Estuaire, and L’Entracte, as well as online at Cette ville étrange. Moreover, he has given numerous musical creation workshops and guest conferences in elementary and secondary schools, colleges, and universities in addition to teaching at the Camp musical Père Lindsay.