Canadian Violinist Emmanuel Vukovich has played for audiences around the globe with artists such as Ida Haendel, Anton Kuerti, and Matt Haimowitz. Recipient of McGill University’s Schulich School of Music Golden Violin Award and The Canada Council for the Arts Orford String Quartet Scholarship, he was a member of the Lloyd Carr-Harris String Quartet, winner at the Fischoff International Chamber Music Competition. Emmanuel began playing the violin with Danuta Ciring and left his native Calgary at sixteen to pursue studies with Masao Kawasaki and Dorothy Delay at the Juilliard School in New York City. He completed his undergraduate degree with Denise Lupien and André Roy at McGill University. During this time he also pursued studies in Environment, subsequently devoting four years to work in organic agriculture. Having returned to music in 2011, Emmanuel is currently completing a graduate performance degree and teaching at McGill University, and has founded an international chamber music collective called The Parcival Project. He plays a violin made in Montreal by Denis Cormier.
On connections between music and farming, Violinist Vukovich states “Originally, music, dance, and artistic culture in general were strongly inter-connected to, and a part of, our human civilization’s relationship to nature. This was expressed in traditional agrarian society through rituals in rhythm with the seasons – such as harvest festivals. As people have migrated more and more to large urban centres, artistic cultural life has tended to separate from agricultural life. We go to concerts in the city, and we get our food from farms in the country. This has often created a void and famine of culture and arts in rural farming communities, and a corresponding disconnect/abstraction in the arts.” To this end, the proceeds from these events will go towards the creation of a foundation which works to connect world-class music-making and artistic culture with local sustainable agriculture and farming communities.