Members

An interdisciplinary artist, André Pappathomas developed and invested his work as a composer and stage director as a choir director. As director of the Mruta Mertsi Vocal Ensemble, he has conceived and produced a large number of creations linked to other artistic disciplines: visual arts, theater, literature and dance (over 40 choreographers and performers have collaborated on the numerous editions of Choeur et chorégraphes). At the same time, he explored with choristers a method of controlled improvisation and discovered an unsuspected potential in this form of musical expression.

Invited to share this technique with vocal ensembles from near and far, he has conceived numerous concerts and sound installations, including “Souffles” in 2016 at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier at Place des Arts in Montreal, bringing together 10 choirs from 10 different countries. Several concerts for the Société de Musique Contemporaine du Québec and the Point de fuite event at the Musée des beaux-arts du Québec in 2008. 

As a composer, designer and stage director, André Pappathomas has worked with many artists from other disciplines: visual arts, theater, poetry and literature, and above all over 40 choreographer-performers who have collaborated on numerous editions of Chœur et chorégraphes.

In 2017, he was the first recipient of the Artist in the Community award presented by Arts et la Ville and the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, as well as a finalist in the 32nd Grand Prix du Conseil des Arts de Montréal for the concert “Souffles”.

At the Rideau 2022 gala, the Réseau des Maisons de la culture de Montréal received the Social and Environmental Responsibility award as producer of the Les chants de l'île project, created by Mr. Pappathomas and bringing together 10 choirs from as many cultural communities. 

“Pappathomas has a vivid imagination. For it takes imagination to achieve such results, to lead performers to reconcile great melodies with the most atonal sequences, to contrast eras from the Baroque to the ultra-contemporary, to weld together great vocal traditions, from European to Tibetan, to make the determined and the aleatoric cohabit.” Alain Brunet, La Presse