Julie Richard (QC) (2019-present)

As a mem­ber of the fran­coph­o­ne com­mu­ni­ty in Que­bec, it is of inter­est to me to open my hori­zons to more glob­al ini­tia­tives whose scope and man­dates are just as inno­v­a­tive as the caus­es they sup­port. I am there­fore filled with impa­tience and curios­i­ty as I join the board of CNMN. 

Com­mit­ted musi­cian, com­pos­er and cul­tur­al work­er, Julie Richard has been active­ly involved in Mon­tre­al’s artis­tic and musi­cal scenes for near­ly 20 years. Three-time grad­u­ate in clas­si­cal music, she is also versed in vocal inter­pre­ta­tion, jazz, pop, exper­i­men­tal music as well as African, Gyp­sy, Jew­ish and Cre­ole music.

Hav­ing par­tic­i­pat­ed in numer­ous tours across Cana­da and the Unit­ed States, she par­tic­i­pat­ed in the SXSW fes­ti­val and per­formed inter­na­tion­al­ly in East­ern Europe, France and Colom­bia. Along­side her musi­cal prac­tice, Julie’s inter­dis­ci­pli­nary career led her to work in the areas of artis­tic man­age­ment, inter­ven­tion psy­chol­o­gy, and cul­tur­al research and ani­ma­tion. She is also known for her involve­ment in the pro­gram­ming of the Lux Magna fes­ti­val and the Suoni per il Popo­lo festival.

Her lat­est project, Black Ark Orches­tra, inspired her to work with frag­ments of musi­cal com­po­si­tions cre­at­ed by black musi­cians who pre­dom­i­nant­ly came up in the Unit­ed States in the 1920s. The Black Ark project aims to reha­bil­i­tate these mar­gin­al­ized works of clas­si­cal music pro­duced by African-Amer­i­can women. It is a ques­tion of find­ing, updat­ing and rec­og­niz­ing the val­ue of what remains of these com­po­si­tions so that they do not remain for­got­ten, so that they can final­ly enter into con­ver­sa­tion with the his­to­ry of con­tem­po­rary music. In com­pos­ing, she does not seek to accu­rate­ly recon­struct the con­tours of these com­po­si­tions, but aims to draw a liv­ing ges­ture that is non-lin­ear and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly heal­ing, trans­for­ma­tive and creative.