Mélisande Corriveau
Devotee of Renaissance and baroque music, enthusiast of historic instruments, travel and gourmet food, Mélisande Corriveau is mother to two charming adolescents!

Player of recorders, cello, all viols including the pardessus de viol, she has become a virtuoso at l’Art de toucher, as Couperin put it, on her bevy of instruments. She hunts for new repertoire, is inspired by treatises and takes a keen interest in the historic context of music in society and the musical languages the societies created. Her next conquest is to be the violoncello piccolo!

Playing with her inspiring colleagues with whom she shares so much extraordinary music, musical cameraderie and close friendship, is at the heart of her musical life! She feels privileged to work with her companion and duo partner, musical director and keyboardist, Eric Milnes, her consort partners in Les Voix humaines, her group L’Harmonie des Saisons and her European colleagues in Ensemble Masques, all giving her the gift of ongoing fascinating projects and travel to exotic lands, a nomadic life that reflects the music she loves!

Gramophone: “Mélisande Corriveau is of the new generation of musicians gifted with great interpretive talent as well as knowledge of performance practice… virtuosity, delicacy and elegance, sensitivity and refinement all in the service of colourful and textured expressivity…”

Mélisande Corriveau has recorded extensively on several labels and her recent CD of French 18th century music, Pardessus de viole with Eric Milnes was included in the CBC’s top ten while her ensemble L’Harmonie des saisons was winner of a Juno award in 2016.

She plays on a 1691 Barak Norman viol, a Nathaniel Cross cello from 1700, and a pardessus de viole by Pierre Le Pilleur dated 1755.