Meet the Student: Q&A with Conductor Benoit Gauthier

Benoit Gauthier, from Baie-Comeau, Quebec, entered the Curtis Institute of Music in 2023 and will conduct the Philadelphia premiere of Latin GRAMMY®-nominated composer Gabriela Ortiz’s kaleidoscopic Kauyumari (“The Blue Deer”) on Saturday, January 27, at 3 p.m., in the second Curtis Symphony Orchestra concert of the season, “Beethoven, Ortiz, and Barber.” As a conducting fellow, he works closely with Curtis mentor conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera. All students at Curtis receive merit-based, full-tuition scholarships, and Mr. Gauthier is the Rita E. Hauser Conducting Fellow.

When did your musical journey begin, and what led you to pursue a career as an orchestral conductor?

I always have been interested in how instruments work, even when I was young. I’ve always wanted to learn as many instruments as I possibly could. At first, it seemed like I was not focusing enough on a main instrument, but today, I can see this post [at Curtis] and say that all of this prepared me to be a conductor. It also helps me to know how to express music in different ways with different instruments.

The piano was always, and still is, the instrument I often turn to and with whom I feel at home. My mom was a piano teacher at home when I was young. She once tried to give me a lesson, but the chemistry between us was horrible for that, so instead, I was always there listening when she was teaching; it trained me to continue learning with a clear goal in my head.

I’m from a little town in the north of Quebec, and there were no professional musicians around me. So, in my mind, it was impossible to become a musician and study music. If I had not done this in my life, I was going to become a healthcare professional. I once had a meeting with a conservatory clarinet teacher, and the next day, my path changed.

You are the founder, conductor, and artistic director of the Orchestre symphonique de la Côte-Nord. What compelled you to create this ensemble, and what have been some of the most memorable projects you’ve brought to life during your tenure with the organization?

When I was 16 years old, I was doing a project for my school, and I decided to ask my friends at the time, musician friends, to perform in a concert. There was no orchestra in this part of Quebec at this moment, so nobody had the chance to play together in an orchestral setting. I asked around to see if they were free to do this one concert. It was a really great opportunity for both musicians and the public to [come together] for this performance, and both asked me to do this again.

At this point, I was leaving the city to study, and I brought my friends from the music school where I was studying. Then, this orchestra began to get bigger and bigger. Today is our twelfth anniversary as an orchestra. Tomorrow there’s a concert, and I’m not the conductor. It’s the first time for that. It’s a weird feeling, too, for me to have someone else lead, but I’m happy about this because now Côte-Nord has its own orchestra, which is something that the people can be proud of. It serves the people and makes life better because they can now enjoy music at home.

I always have been, I think, innocent in the way that I’ve tried to do big projects without really knowing how to do them. Either way, in a way, it all worked out. For the fifth anniversary, we did Carmina Burana, and at this point, the orchestral musicians were not paid. It was still like a community orchestra in a region far away, like an 8-hour drive, from the big cities of Quebec City and Montreal—there were like five orchestra musicians in the city. I asked a lot of people from everywhere to come and perform Carmina. It was a huge orchestra, a huge choir, including a children’s choir. They were just there to have fun and take a trip.

During each summer or autumn, we had been trying to do a smaller project in the community north of our region, the north shore of Quebec, really close to Labrador. There’s no road to go there. You must [travel] by boat or by plane, but it’s still the same region. More than a year ago, we went there for a two-week residency. For the first week, we created a show for children. But by the second week, we were in the children’s school, and the teachers were so enthusiastic that they stopped teaching for a week, and we did artistic activities with them. The children had never had a music lesson in their life. They didn’t know what a double bass was, nor had they ever seen one in their life, and for one week, we did musical activities for the whole day with them. It was an amazing experience for everyone.

Benoit Gauthier conducts the Orchestre symphonique de la Côte-Nord in a performance of the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, Op. 67.

This month, you are making your Curtis Symphony Orchestra debut, conducting Gabriela Ortiz’s Kauyumari. From the moment you first cracked the score, what have you found to be some of the most interesting and enjoyable aspects of the piece?

So, what is so interesting about this piece is the rhythmic aspect. It’s not really a regular pattern, and the challenge for me is to make it evolve without restraining it. There’s also a strong spiritual aspect in this piece that’s interesting and inspiring for me—a way of thinking about nature and spirituality. There is a certain Mexican tradition where people take some kind of medicinal plant and ask nature to help them on their path. We can hear it in the music in the beginning. It’s really calm, but then it sounds like all the spirit animals or spirits are coming, like a big party or fiesta. It begins slowly and goes faster and faster for the whole piece until the end.

It’s a challenge for the conductor not to start too fast and give more energy to the musicians at certain moments while doing excellent actuation of the music. We have a strong idea of where and how to do it because it’s a big challenge for a conductor. There’s something at the end when this piece ends—I can breathe better. There’s something regenerating about this piece that’s, in a way, like medicine. There’s a release, and I think it will be felt by the audience itself.

What do you hope to glean from your studies at Curtis, working with Maestro Nézet-Séguin?

In the life of a musician, it’s interesting to eventually have this feeling that you can concentrate on the artistry first. From my first day here at Curtis, I can really dig deep into that and focus on my passion, making music. I worked with Yannick for a few years in Montreal [as a member of the Orchestral Conducting Academy of the Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal under his direction] before coming here to Curtis. Yannick is a big inspiration to me. Because of his great intelligence, he always understands what I want to express musically and knows exactly what I need to improve to get there to convince the musicians in the orchestra.

I have a lot of confidence when I am in front of an orchestra; I can see that when I am working with the [Orchestre symphonique de la Côte-Nord]. But here I’m learning to have strong ideas and be absolutely sure of what I’m thinking and doing up there. I think it’s what I was looking for at this moment in my life. I was also looking to have mentors and be inspired, not only in a gestural and conducting way but also be inspired by life and art.

At the beginning of the year, Jim [James Ross (Conducting ’89)] led the orchestra bootcamp. I learned two days before that I had to conduct the William Tell Overture and the fourth movement of Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony. I was on the podium and not originally supposed to conduct, but I think because I could present myself to the musicians and the Curtis community so early on, it was a good welcome for me. I’ve had a great experience listening to and working with the musicians here. They are so great.

Another time, a few weeks before Christmas, Yannick gave this master class at Jacobs Music on Chestnut Street. This Curtis student was playing, and I was so inspired. It made me realize how much I can learn by listening to my colleagues. They will be the future generation of professional musicians everywhere. Even if they’re really young, there is something about their artistry that I can learn a lot from.

During the pandemic, there were no musical activities, so I started studying osteopathy. I am three years through my program, which is a five-year program, so I still have two years to do. When I knew I was coming to Curtis, I had to tell my Osteopathic school in Quebec that I was taking two years off. After Curtis, I might go back and finish my diploma in Quebec. Taking care of people has always been a driving force in my life. Osteopathy and conducting are strangely very similar. In the conducting world, we have a lot of opportunities that come, so there’s no point in thinking about that right now because all I have is this moment. There are a lot of things that I find interesting in life. Anything can happen, and I’m not worried because I’m just choosing to do what I love.

Visit Benoit Gauthier’s official website HERE. 

Interview with Mr. Gauthier by Ryan Scott Lathan.

Curtis Symphony Orchestra
The Jack Wolgin Orchestral Concerts

Beethoven, Ortiz, and Barber
Saturday, January 27 at 3:00 p.m.
Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center; Broad and Spruce Streets, Philadelphia

Michael Stern, conductor (’86)
Benoit Gauthier, Rita E. Hauser Conducting Fellow
Pamela Frank, violin (’89)
Curtis Symphony Orchestra

Orchestral concerts are supported by the Jack Wolgin Curtis Orchestral Concerts Endowment Fund.

Guest conductor appearances for each Curtis Symphony Orchestra performance are made possible by the Rita E. and Gustave M. Hauser Chair in Conducting Studies.

Single tickets for “Beethoven, Ortiz, and Barber” start at $19 and are available for purchase at Curtis.edu. The flexible Choose Your Own subscription option offers 25% off ticket prices when purchasing tickets to two or more performances. To order a subscription, visit Curtis.edu/Subscribe, call (215) 893-7902, or email tickets@curtis.edu.

Photos of Benoit Gauthier: 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, & 8.) Courtesy of Isabelle Paradis. 3.) Courtesy of Ludovic Rolland-Marcotte with the Orchestre Métropolitain. 5.) Courtesy of François Trahan.