A native of Quebec, Canada, Eric Trudel graduated with top honors from the Quebec Conservatory of Music. He won the prestigious Prix d’Europe competition, which enabled him to study privately with pianists Garrick Ohlsson, Jean-Claude Pennetier, Marc Durand and Louis Lortie. He has taught and performed extensively throughout Canada, Italy, Germany, Austria, Japan, Korea, Spain, and the United States. His New York City credits include recitals at Weil Recital Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall and the 92nd Street Y.
Mr. Trudel has performed in association with many organizations, including the Metropolitan Opera, Yale Institute for Musical Theater, Yale School of Drama, Montreal International Piano Festival, the Banff Center Festival for the Arts, L’Opéra de Montréal, Connecticut Grand Opera, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, the Oklahoma Mozart Festival, Pro Arte Singers, and Concora. Equally at ease in experimental projects, he has been involved in the creation of the hit musical Nelligan in Montreal, Christopher Cerrone’s opera Invisible Cities for Yale Institute of Music Theater, and the new Adam Bock/Todd Almond musical We Have Always Lived in a Castle for Yale Rep.
His faculty appointments include the Banff Centre for the Performing Arts, the Conservatoire de Musique du Québec in Trois-Rivières, Montréal Opera’s Atelier Lyrique, the Université du Québec à Montréal and more recently Yale University’s School of Music and Western Connecticut State University. He currently is on faculty at University of Hartford’s Hartt School of Music and Southern Connecticut State University.
His association with the CBC includes numerous television and radio performances as a soloist, chamber musician and accompanist. On CD, he can be heard on the CBC and Star labels, and on the 6 albums of the complete songs of Charles Ives released by Naxos. He recently completed the recording of the complete songs for voice and piano by American composer Scott Perkins, to be released in 2018.
In 2008, the national publication Classical Singer Magazine chose Eric Trudel to be “Vocal Coach of the Year”, a crowning acknowledgement of his many years of collaborative work with opera singers. He has also been the principal pianist for the Classical Singer Convention Competition since 2006.
In opera, he has recently conducted productions of Carmen, Dialogues des Carmélites, Kat’a Kabanová, Street Scene, Suor Angelica, Les Mamelles de Tirésias and Peter Grimes.
His musical theater credits include conducting The Fantasticks at the National Arts Center in Ottawa, preparing and conducting Evita and concerts with Madison Lyric Stage, countless Broadway reviews with the Guilford Performing Arts Festival, the Montreal International Jazz Festival, and the Ivoryton Broadway on the Shore series.
Eric is a member of the Wall Street Chamber Players, a group of first chair musicians from the New Haven Symphony and other orchestras who have been performing in their own subscription series through Connecticut for the past 35 years. In June 2018, he was appointed music director of the Stamford Chorale.
He is an avid reader of both fiction and nonfiction literature, and devotes whatever free time he has to hiking and foreign languages. A passionate student and practitioner of the Alexander Technique, he gratefully credits his mentor Rachel Bernsen with weekly life-changing experiences.
Conductor James Sinclair