Share on Facebook
Share on X
Share by Email
Share on Google Classroom
Marie Irène Louise Laplante (commonly Louise Laplante), administrator, teacher (born 2 October 1943 in Montreal, QC). Louise Laplante is a pianist and music educator in Quebec. She taught numerous courses and published teaching guides and brochures. During her career, she served as a director for multiple different organizations, including as the general director of the Quebec Symphony Orchestra.
Education and Career
Louise Laplante studied from 1962–8 at the École normale de musique with Claude Champagne (theory) and Jean Leduc and William Stevens (piano). In 1971 she took a course in ethnomusicology with Laszlo Vikar at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and a course in Indigenous ethnology at the University of Montreal, where her regular studies from 1968–72 were with Françoise Aubut (fugue), André Prévost and Serge Garant (analysis), and Maryvonne Kendergi (history and musicology) (see also Music at University of Quebec/Université du Québec). As a pianist, she won prizes in 1959, 1961 and 1962 at the Quebec Music Festivals (see Canadian Music Competitions) and appeared in several concerts, notably in 1962 at Plateau Hall with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (MSO).
Laplante taught from 1969–73 at the École normale de musique and gave courses from 1970–6 in music literature, the history of Canadian music and ethnomusicology at UQAM. She lectured at the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi, at Université du Québec à Trois-rivieres and taught at the École Vincent-d'Indy. In 1974 and 1975 the Quebec Department of Education published her teaching guides to three works by, respectively, François Morel, Claude Champagne and R. Murray Schafer. She edited Compositeurs canadiens contemporains (the French-language edition of Contemporary Canadian Composers) and the Canadian Music Centre brochures Compositeurs au Québec.
She served from 1973–80 as Quebec regional director of the CMCentre. In 1979, she participated in the founding of the Éditions Québec-Musique. She was general director from 1981–6 of the Orchestre des jeunes du Québec, then head of the music and opera section of the Canada Council from 1986–8. In 1988, she was appointed general director of the Quebec Symphony Orchestra.
