Montreal Percussion Workshop

Catherine Meunier

Solois, solo percussionist Orchestre symphonique de Trois-Rivières and Orchestre des Grands Ballets | Guest mentor

Catherine Meunier is the first percussionist to win the prestigious Prix d’Europe. Her debut CD Night Chill is acclaimed by critics: “Montreal percussionist Catherine Meunier shines throughout” (The WholeNote, December 2009).

As a soloist and chamber musician, Catherine Meunier has given concerts in Canada, the U.S., Mexico, Taiwan, and Japan. She has been a soloist with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional of Mexico, the Orchestre symphonique de Longueuil, the Orchestre symphonique de Sherbrooke and Ensemble Prestissimo. As an orchestral musician, Catherine is Solo Percussion with the Orchestre Symphonique de Trois-Rivières and Section Percussion with the Orchestre des Grands ballets Canadiens de Montréal. She plays regularly with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Orchestre Métropolitain, Orchestre Symphonique de Laval, and many others.

Catherine taught percussion at the Crane School of Music at SUNY-Potsdam from 2011-2021 and at the Montreal Conservatory in 2020-2021 and 2022-2023. She is often invited to give masterclasses across Canada.

Léo Guiollot

Freelancer, musical and artistic director of Kumpa'nia, Cégep de Sherbrooke | Guest mentor

With a Master's degree in classical percussion from the Université de Montréal and a 5th cycle diploma in orchestral repertoire from the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal, Léo Guiollot is very active as a freelancer with numerous classical, contemporary and baroque ensembles (Orchestre Classique de Montréal, Sixtrum, Orchestre des Grands Ballets Canadiens, Agora, OM, Éclat, Caprice, Orchestres symphoniques de Sherbrooke, Trois-Rivières, Québec, Laval).

He has also honed his skills in Brazil, Cuba and Spain, working closely with local musical traditions. He founded and directed Movimento for 10 years, and is now musical and artistic director of Kumpa'nia.

Léo is a Los Cabos artist and teaches at the Cégep de Sherbrooke.

Catherine Varvaro

Principal timpani Orchestre symphonique de Drummondville | Guest mentor

Catherine’s career in music had been anything but a straight line, but with every twist, curiosity and persistence has guided her. As a kid, piano lessons gave way to the drum set. She wound up studying jazz drums and health sciences after high school before swerving left to pursue classical percussion performance at the Université de Montréal. Craving more knowledge about her craft, she lived for a year in Boston where she studied with the timpanist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Back in Montreal, she dove into a handful of challenges: fusing percussion and drum set in her eclectic electro trad group; performing and competing on the Highland snare with the Montreal Pipes and Drums; creating a sound design for Shakespeare in the park that earned her two META nominations; and completing her Master’s degree at the Conservatoire de Montréal.

Over the course of her freelance career in Greater Montreal’s orchestral scene, Catherine set out to specialize in timpani. She credits her approach to the instrument to the two summers she spent with the National Academy Orchestra and timpanist Jean Norman Iadeluca where she learned to embody his smooth, relaxed approach and big sound. Recently, she participated in a week of masterclasses taught by Tom Greenleaves, Marks Rhoten and Rainer Seegers at the inaugural Copper & Cow timpani workshop in Colditz, Germany. She has had the privilege of being the timpanist of the Orchestre symphonique de Drummondville since 2019.

Krystina Marcoux

Stick&Bow and Paramirabo | Guest mentor

Flamboyant and energetic, Krystina Marcoux is rapidly gaining a reputation for her particular interest in interdisciplinary works. She dedicates her creativity in conceiving shows that combine musical excellence to other artistic disciplines. She strongly defends the idea that a stage is one malleable material that needs bending, curving and playing around, just like plasticine. Allying theater, dance, stand-up comedy, miming, humor or even sports to her percussion playing on stage, Krystina strives to open her musical world to a larger and broader audience.

Julien Bélanger

Principal Timpani, Orchestre Métropolitain | Guest mentor

Initially a chorister with the Petits-Chanteurs-du-Mont-Royal, Julien Bélanger discovered percussion at Collège Notre-Dame in Montreal. He then studied this instrument at the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal from 2013 to 2017 and at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, from which he obtained a Bachelor's degree in 2021. Since 2015 he has been principal timpanist of the Orchestre Métropolitain and collaborates as a freelancer with several other ensembles, such as the Montreal, Laval and Trois-Rivières symphony orchestras and Les Violons du Roy, as well as the Bach Festival Orchestra.​

Bryn Lutek

Principal percussion, Orchestre symphonique de Québec | Guest mentor

Bryn Lutek has served as the principal percussionist of the Orchestre Symphonique de Quebec since the summer of 2020; and is a graduate of the University of Toronto, the Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory of Music Toronto, and McGill University. As a soloist and chamber musician Bryn has performed with the National Arts Centre Orchestra and given premieres of music by Kotoka Suzuki, Stephanie Orlando, Amy Thompson, and Ania Vu.  As a researcher Bryn was awarded an SSHRC Graduate Scholarship in 2019 and he has presented work at the TENOR International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation & Representation. His research interests centre around the history and aesthetics of electronic music and media.