Lysiane Boulva    
harpsichord • organ
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Early music has always been present in my life. My parents were not musicians, but they always loved to listen, as proves their collection of recordings, which revolves around 17th- and 18th-century music.

I started playing violin at the age of 4. Perhaps if I had been given a baroque violin, things would have turned out differently. As it happens, I mostly thought it was very uncomfortable. I clearly remember my mother trying to coerce me into practicing, while all I did was rush to our upright piano, trying to teach myself how the two lines of music fit together, and how they related to the black and white keyboard. I also had a cassette that I'd listen to every night before going to bed: Igor Kipnis’ Harpsichord Greatest Hits. Somehow, its violin equivalent didn’t hold the same appeal for me.

As a 9-year-old, my parents brought my sisters and I to Europe for a two-month road trip, aboard an old VW Westfalia we rented upon arriving in Amsterdam. That summer, I discovered European culture at its best, got myself a nice French accent (or so I was told), and stumbled upon the most wonderful place I could have dreamed of, the exhibition hall of the Bruges Harpsichord Competition.

The huge room was filled to the brim with harpsichords of all sorts, all painted differently, with one, two, and even three keyboards! The room was mostly empty of people; it must have been during one of the competitions at the nearby hall. I was free to run around and press on all the keys I wanted, but I was also a bit jealous of my older sister. At the time, she had been studying harpsichord, and was lucky enough to have actual pieces to play on the instruments. As a result, and after much nagging on my part, my parents allowed me to switch from violin to the harpsichord the following year, and I never looked back.

Headshot Lysiane Boulva
Headshot Lysiane Boulva

Biography

Harpsichordist Lysiane Boulva performs regularly in Canada and in Europe, including for concerts organized by the Festival Oude Muziek in Utrecht (Netherlands), the Musée de l’Amérique francophone (Canada), the Amis de l’orgue de Rimouski (Canada), and the Concerts aux Iles du Bic Festival (Canada). In Toronto, she has been invited as a guest musician for concerts with the Toronto-based baroque ensembles I FURIOSI, Musicians In Ordinary, Essential Opera (Handel’s Alcina), and the Academy Concert Series. As a continuo player, she has performed under the direction of Fabio Bonizzoni, Jeanne Lamon, Ivars Taurins, and Elizabeth Wallfisch among others. She also has been assisting for many years with the organization of the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute, where she regularly serves as accompanist.

Lysiane holds a Masters of Music in harpsichord performance from the Université de Montréal, as well as a Bachelor of Music and a Masters of Arts in early music and historical performance practice from the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, Netherlands. Recipient of a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, an Ontario Graduate Scholarship, as well as a J. Armand Bombardier Internationalist Fellowship, Lysiane has studied with Patrick Ayrton, Fabio Bonizzoni, Kenneth Gilbert, Ton Koopman, and Blandine Verlet. Thanks to a scholarship from the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et culture, she recently finished her Doctorate in Musical Arts at the University of Toronto, during which she focused on French harpsichord music of the mid-18th century. This led to the completion of her thesis, “French Harpsichord Music of the Enlightenment: A Study of Jacques Duphly and the Aesthetic Context of his Life and Work,” part of which she presented at the 16th Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music in Salzburg.

Her current projects include the production of a documentary about the harpsichord, which will cover the making of the instruments, the harpsichord competition in Bruges, and will present the story of Scott Ross, an American harpsichordist who lived in France and grew famous during the 1970s and 1980s.

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