BIOGRAPHY
Montreal native Charles-Eric Fontaine is a conductor and oboist with a passion for contemporary music and composer-performer collaboration. Known for his meticulous attention to detail and his devotion to collaborating musicians, he brings a vivid sense of intimacy and clarity to his performances. He has conducted the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Ensemble Court-Circuit, Divertimento Ensemble, Paramirabo, AltreVoci Ensemble, Black House New Music Collective and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.
He obtained his Master’s degree in conducting from McGill University in 2021 and has studied with Alain Cazes, Guillaume Bourgogne, Lorraine Vaillancourt, Jean Deroyer, Sandro Gorli, Marco Angius and Alain Trudel. He has conducted more than fifty world premieres, recorded three albums, including one with the Milan-based Divertimento Ensemble, and worked alongside Stephen McAdams as part of the ACTOR research program on timbre and orchestration.
In 2023, he founded Ensemble Éclat, an ensemble of 15 musicians with the mission of fostering interdisciplinary collaborations that connect audiences with hidden gems of the contemporary repertoire. In 2025, the ensemble was invited to participate in a residency at IRCAM (Paris), in order to refine its performance practice of electroacoustic and multimedia repertoires.
Laureate of the Royaumont Foundation in 2023, he has received grants from the Austrian Society, the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, the Fondation des Jeunesses Musicales, and the Italian Ministry of Culture. During the 2025–27 seasons, Charles-Eric will have the opportunity to benefit from Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s mentorship at the Orchestre Métropolitain’s Conducting Academy.