Born from a shared love for exploring chamber music together, the Proteus Saxophone
Quartet was formed in 2011 in Paris while the members were studying in French
Conservatories. Each musician is a soloist in their own right and is active as a performer
and teacher in their respective communities. Living across Canada, Proteus unites
throughout the year for intensive projects, which have taken them across Western
Canada, the USA and France. Proteus is a selected artist with Prairie Debut for their
2017-18 touring season and the quartet has recently finished touring across Alberta,
Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.

Along with performing for festivals and concert organizers, Proteus has hosted
independently organized concerts in France, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, and
Alberta. They strive to perform music from many styles, which feature the saxophone and
its diverse personas. They include works from the classical saxophone canon, popular
tunes, and modern interpretations of non-idiomatic works for the saxophone. By
programming eclectic concerts, they aim to entertain and to educate the public about the
history of the saxophone and the saxophone quartet repertoire.

Proteus Quartet strives to collaborate with both composers and performers in order to
increase the reach and range of the saxophone quartet. Proteus has been fortunate to work
closely with Canadian and international composers through workshops, commissions,
and music festivals. The quartet has worked with the Victoria Composers’ Collective,
with composers through the Strata New Music Festival, as well as working closely with
Canadian composers Robert Lemay, and Justin Boechler. The quartet has also worked
with jazz saxophonist Mark DeJong, performing crossover works by Philippe Geiss, as
well as with French composer/improviser Francois Rosse on his work Mod’Son7. The
quartet has performed with the Jean-Michel Goury and Friends Saxophone Ensemble at
the 2015 World Saxophone Congress, and has started a collaboration with drummer Sean
Perrin, playing progressive rock songs for saxophone quartet and drum kit.

The members of Proteus Quartet are from all across Canada, and currently live across the
country. Tommy Davis currently lives in Montreal, where he is active in the improvised
music scene, as well as working with many different ensembles and a growing teaching
studio. Holly DeCaigny divides her time between Edmonton, Alberta, where she will be
pursuing a DMA in saxophone performance, and Calgary, where she is an active
freelance musician and teacher. Mark Michalak lives in Calgary, Alberta. He teaches a
diverse studio of students from beginners to University level, as well as being an active
music teacher in the school boards as a clinician and a substitute teacher. Michael
Morimoto lives in Vancouver, BC, where he has a successful career as a music instrument
repair technician, as well as a growing teaching studio, and freelance musician.

– VISIT THE PROTEUS QUARTET’S EDUCATION AND ENGAGEMENT PAGE TO LEARN MORE – 

Accomplished percussionist Beverley Johnston and Marc Djokic come together for an inimitable partnership of percussion and violin.
– Peter Robb, Artsfile.ca, 2017

The Bev & Marc duo combines percussion (mainly the marimba, with the addition of vibraphone and musical saw!) and strings (violin) to present a new performance dynamic to the audience.

The visual impact of the marimba and other on-stage gear peaks the audience interest before the concert begins; their performance has a strong visual and aural presence which is seen from two very unique approaches to playing two very different instruments.

Bev & Marc has commissioned and premiered works from Canadian composers. One of their highlight pieces, Quantum Holograms by Richard Mascall, was jointly commissioned by the Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council, and features the use of digital FX pedals, adding a new media element to their performance. Their latest commission is from award winning Canadian composer Christos Hatzis which was premiered in Montreal in 2018.

The duo usually plays a style of melodic, contemporary, tonal music; their smoothly paced, eclectic programming shows that not all of contemporary music is abstract and atonal. Bev & Marc perform popular marimba and violin repertoire but also research and arrange other pieces to adapt to their instrumentation.

This super energetic duo has performed at Chamberfest, Music and Beyond, Jeunesses Musicales, CAMMAC, Kincardine Summer Music Festival, and several other festival series including university concert series and masterclasses. They have released three music videos filmed in Montreal and produced by noncerto.

– VISIT BEV & MARC’S EDUCATION AND ENGAGEMENT PAGE TO LEARN MORE – 

Hailed as “rapturous and glowing” by International Record Review and “an inspirational and devoted pianist” by Life & Arts – Financial Times, Polish-Canadian pianist Daniel Wnukowski has performed throughout Europe, North America, South America and Asia in prestigious concert halls. He has performed with many orchestras, including the Polish Radio Orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia, Windsor Symphony, Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana, Poznan Philharmonic, Arthur Rubinstein Philharmonic with conductors such as Jerzy Maksymiuk, Alain Trudel and David Amos. He has also performed in numerous International Festivals such as Chopin and His Europe in Warsaw, Poland; Festival Dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy; Chopiniana in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and the Pre-LSO Concert Series in London, UK.

During the 2018-2019 season, he placed a special focus on the music of Karol Rathaus, a Weimar-era composer whose music came to Mr. Wnukowski’s attention in 2016 through his work with Exil.Arte, a Vienna-based organization whose mission is to restore “degenerate” music. In February 2019, Mr. Wnukowski performed the composer’s Piano Concerto with The Orchestra Now conducted by Leon Botstein, as part of a Rathaus Festival presented by the Copland School of Music at Queens College, where Rathaus was on faculty; made his sold-out Carnegie Hall debut in a program that included the composer’s Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 20; and released an all-Rathaus recording of solo piano music on the Toccata label. For these performances, Mr. Wnukowski was called “a formidable pianist” (ConcertoNet) and “a pianist to watch” (New York Classical Review). Mr. Wnukowski will also be featured in a documentary on Rathaus produced by Lev Deych & Michael Haas.

Daniel Wnukowski inaugurated the 2017 year in Warsaw, Poland as a special guest at the National Philharmonic Hall, performing Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” under the direction of Jerzy Maksymiuk. The concert was broadcast live on television and a commercial DVD recording was made available. On May 5 that year, he performed at the Austrian Parliament in remembrance of Holocaust victims targeted by Nazi Germany. This deeply, meaningful event was also broadcast live on Austrian television for ORF-2.

During the 2015-2016 season, Daniel Wnukowski performed a solo piano recital tour in China. He also performed a recently published piano concerto by a Polish-Jewish composer, Jozef Koffler, who had died during the Holocaust. This performance was recorded live in Warsaw, Poland, with Sinfonia Iuventus under the direction of Krzysztof Slowinski and released on commercial CD by the EDA label in February 2018.

During the years 2013-2014, he recorded and edited the complete piano works of Walter Arlen, an Austrian composer who had escaped the Holocaust, for the Austrian record label Gramola and publisher Doblinger. He is the recipient of numerous scholarships and grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and other foundations for promoting the works of exiled Jewish composers of the early 20th century including Szymon Laks, Karol Rathaus, Józef Koffler, Władysław Szpilman and Viktor Ullmann.

In May 2011, his all-Liszt recital was recorded and broadcast over European and U.S. radio stations. In the beginning of 2010, he inaugurated the Chopin year in Poznań, Poland, together with Metropolitan Opera Soprano Aleksandra Kurzak and was chosen as a Samling Scholar. In May of that same year, he performed a special recital in Tokyo, Japan, to commemorate the unveiling of a new Chopin monument in that city. This also led to a debut in Singapore, in the hall of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra. His outdoor concert at the Singapore Botanic Gardens received rousing ovations by a crowd of close to 3000 people.

He was trained at the Lake Como International Piano Academy in Italy where he worked with distinguished artists such as Dmitri Bashkirov, Menahem Pressler, Claude Frank, Fou Ts’ong, John Perry and William Grant Naboré, at the Peabody Institute of Baltimore under the guidance of Leon Fleisher and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London with Graham Johnson and Ronan O’Hora.

Dedicated to giving back to the country that nurtured him as an artist, Wnukowski was recently awarded a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to perform outreach concerts for remote, Indigenous communities in Canada together with five other pianists. Visit pianosix.com for more information. He is also founder and artistic director of the Collingwood Summer Music Festival.

– VISIT DANIEL’S EDUCATION AND ENGAGEMENT PAGE TO LEARN MORE – 

Renowned as one of the finest trumpet players of his generation, Paul Merkelo is recognized for his “unusual lyrical gifts’’ (Gramophone) as well as his “pure technical prowess’’ (Rochester Democrat & Chronicle). Principal trumpet with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra since 1995, Merkelo is regularly praised by the Montreal press as “a spectacular soloist… a most impressive master of his instrument’’ (Montreal Gazette), and a “great virtuoso” and “dazzling’’ (La Presse). He has been featured frequently with the OSM, including tours to South America and the Lincoln Center in New York, along with several world premiere works. Most recently, he has released a solo recording with Maestro Kent Nagano and the OSM entitled French Trumpet Concertos, which was a 2016 Juno Award nominee for Classical Album of the Year.

In 1998, he made his New York debut at Lincoln Center with the New World Symphony Orchestra and Michael Tilson Thomas, performing the U.S. orchestral premiere of Carmen Fantasie by Franz Waxman. Merkelo was appointed Canadian musical ambassador to China in 1999 for the inauguration of the Montreal Park in Shanghai, and he performed as soloist with the Shanghai Broadcast Orchestra in a national telecast. He has been featured with orchestras and in recital throughout the United States, Canada, Russia, China, Australia, Japan, Portugal, Brazil, Venezuela, Peru, France and Thailand. He has worked with conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, Charles Dutoit, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Sir Georg Solti and Valery Gergiev. Merkelo’s first solo recording, A Simple Song, was ranked #1 in Quebec’s classical
recording chart in 2000 and in 2004, Analekta released a highly praised second CD, Baroque Transcriptions, which was nominated by the ADISQ for “Best Classical Album of the Year”.

Previously, he was Principal Trumpet with the Rochester Philharmonic and the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra and gained early orchestral experience as an extra with the New York Philharmonic and Pittsburgh Symphony. Merkelo is a faculty member at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara and at McGill University in Montreal. He is on the board of directors for the Youth Orchestra of the Americas (Canada), and is the founder of the Paul Merkelo Scholarship helping young Canadian musicians. He will be recording the Haydn, Hummel and Mozart concerti with the Oxford Philharmonic in 2018.

Paul Merkelo is a Yamaha artist.

Serhiy Salov, piano

Serhiy Salov is recognized as an outstanding pianist, whose playing is both energetic and imbued with sensitivity. He is known for his remarkable technique and exacting rigour and virtuosity, qualities that unwaveringly serve the poetry inherent in the music. Public enthusiasm and critical acclaim have amply confirmed his prominent status on the international music scene as a soloist and chamber musician. In addition, Serhiy Salov has achieved distinction for his piano transcriptions of symphonic works such as Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, Debussy’s Nocturnes, Mussorgsky’s Night on a Bald Mountain, and many others.

After initially learning music in Ukraine, Salov pursued his studies in London, obtaining a Master’s degree from the prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama, followed by a Doctor of Music degree from the Université de Montréal. His gifts extend far beyond the mastery of piano technique: the disciplines of improvisation, musicology, and the study of languages complement his training and enable him to deploy a highly expressive individual approach.

A superlative concert performer, Serhiy Salov has collaborated with renowned conductors and numerous orchestras around the world. He is regularly featured at the foremost international music festivals, and has been awarded many prizes in competitions worldwide.

– VISIT MERKELO & SALOV’S EDUCATION AND ENGAGEMENT PAGE TO LEARN MORE –

– VISIT MEAGAN&AMY’S EDUCATION AND ENGAGEMENT PAGE TO LEARN MORE –