Saturday, at Claude-Champagne Hall, Jean-François Rivest will conduct the University of Montreal Orchestra in the 2e Symphony by Gustav Mahler, a concert which will mark the retirement of this professor who, as creator of this orchestra, marked the history of the Faculty of Music.
“While I was not a conductor, I learned to conduct quietly by myself,” remembers Jean-François Rivest, a great violinist, who joined the faculty to teach the violin. “I went to see Robert Leroux, the dean at the time, to tell him that we needed to create an orchestra. » The dean gave him carte blanche. Thirty years later, Jean-François Rivest takes stock. “There have been 25 opera productions staged, 2000 students passed through the orchestra, many of whom play in orchestras across Canada and in around twenty countries. I created around a hundred works and put on stage around a hundred soloists, faculty students chosen by competition. I am very, very proud to have been able to teach the trade to all these people,” summarizes the chef at Duty.
Punctuality
The pragmatism of the training is essential in the eyes of Mr. Rivest. “Creating the orchestra was very good, but the primary goal was to learn a profession through good practices. To do this, I set up a whole “professionalizing machine” around the orchestra in terms of how it is managed, for example the music library or the schedules. I am very strict about lateness and absences. The students learn to be punctual very quickly, because I take away points, and we know that in the profession. »
This mentality of professionalism is instilled from every angle, “whether in the game, the partials [répétitions par pupitre]sectionals [répétitions par famille d’instruments]the concert, the way of working and the administration”.
Having consistency in quality is impossible in a university orchestra like the Orchester de l’Université de Montréal (OUM), since quality depends on the student pool. For the concert of the 2e Symphony of Mahler, no level problem to worry about, however. Several musicians wanted to mark the departure of Jean-François Rivest by offering their services, such as trumpeter Stéphane Beaulac or horn player Louis-Philippe Marsolais, themselves teachers. “Several alumni also reached out to me and said, ‘We want to play your last show.’” » Students from the Haute École de musique de Lausanne will also be there as part of an exchange, undertaken four years ago during a Così fan tutte of Mozart in Switzerland, in which eight young Montrealers participated.
The fact remains that the decline in musical practice and teaching at school now has very concrete consequences within the OUM and the faculty as a whole.
Look elsewhere
“The most radical transformation that I dream of is that in each primary school, there is a small choir and that we do 15 minutes of it every morning. It would completely change society,” admits the future retiree.
“We know that the Pierre-Laporte school gave up producing serious musicians a few years ago. Pierre-Laporte was a nursery for my young violinists when I taught violin. We find them at Les Violons du Roy, at I Musici or at the OSM,” notes Jean-François Rivest, who remembers his “parenthesis”, the happy period when he lived in Saguenay, with even greater clarity.
“In the 1980s, I was a violinist at the OSM and I taught at McGill. However, at the age of 25, in 1985, I left everything to go to Chicoutimi to teach the violin. I needed nature after my years in New York. I could not any more. I was so happy to spend seven years in Saguenay. At the Conservatory, I was put in touch with regional music schools. In Arvida alone, a school brought together, between Thursday, Friday and Saturday morning, 2000 little children. And there was a similar one in Chicoutimi, one in La Baie, one in Alma! That made thousands of little children, whose teachers came to see me with their best children. »
The consequence makes sense: “Among my best students, subsequently, I had young people who came from there. » The observation today is brutal: “Now, there is none of that anymore. However, quality is often linked to numbers; It takes bad sculptors to make good sculptors! »
Looking back over the years, Jean-François Rivest sees “a drastic change in our society”. “At the University of Montreal, quality fluctuates, but the general level has not declined. » The recipe is simple: foreign students. “In Quebec, there are far fewer young children playing music and far fewer music schools. So, in recruitment, at the higher education level, the proportion of young Quebecers is lower. For the moment, this is compensated by foreign students. At McGill, there are a lot of Asians, while at the University of Montreal, there are more French and South Americans. » “The proportion has increased by 300% compared to when I returned, 30 years ago,” judges the chef.
What cannot be taught
The training of leaders was marked by other changes. “The number 1 trend is that there have been more and more women. We totally encouraged that; it’s good to re-establish a balance that was a little distorted”, notes Jean-François Rivest who says, a bit mockingly: “I will not talk about the trend which means, from now on, that we must always hire only women female chefs, but I have contributed a lot to promoting women. » Dina Gilbert, for example, is his best-known student.
At the University of Montreal, we teach doctoral direction, a 3-year cycle. The training “has always been very international, Europe, South America, Russia. So there are a lot of chefs trained here who work elsewhere.”
Jean-François Rivest’s vision of this teaching is clear: “Musical thinking cannot be taught. You can teach someone how to have good technique, to be efficient, to have a better method of rehearsal or preparation. But you can’t teach how to be a better performer or how to have more leadership. As a conducting teacher, I teach technique and method. But the development of a student’s leader is linked to his own experiences and I cannot work miracles. »
For Jean-François Rivest this has something universal. “I see no boundaries between a singer, a conductor or a cellist: we take the music, we make it our own and we restore it. From there it’s the same process. Only the techniques and the instrument differ. There is something fundamental about someone’s musicality that cannot be invented all at once. One is musical or not in one’s blood. » From this point of view, Professor Rivest’s credo is constant: “In my position as conductor of the orchestra, violin teacher, conducting teacher and teacher of certain advanced seminars, I see well over 100 young people per year and my speech is: “Develop yourself as a person and as a musician.” We play as we are. »
After the summer of 2024, Jean-François Rivest, retired from the University, will be at the head of I Musici and will accept invitations as conductor, here and there. “I am in great shape humanly, physically, musically. I don’t have another job and I don’t want one. ” He is delighted to conduct from time to time in the Basque Country and in Switzerland and thinks above all of a precious privilege: “To open a symphony just for the pleasure of studying it, I who am always studying the next thing at the program. »