Born in Montreal and currently residing in Paris, oboist Christopher Palameta was a core member of the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra (based in Toronto, Canada) for five years before relocating to France to pursue work with many of Europe’s finest period ensembles. These include Pygmalion, Les Siècles, and La Grande Ecurie in France; Die Kölner Akademie in Germany; Vox Luminis and La Petite Bande in Belgium; The Gabrieli Consort in the UK; Il Pomo d’Oro in Italy; Capella Cracoviensis in Poland; and various other ensembles such as the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra, Suomalainen Barokkiorkesteri (the Finnish Baroque Orchestra), and MusicAeterna (Perm, Russia). With these orchestras, he has toured on five continents and recorded over forty discs for the Sony BMG, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, CPO, BIS, Alpha, Musique en Wallonie, Naxos, ATMA, Analekta, and Audax labels. An ardent defender of unexplored repertoire for the oboe, he was awarded research grants in 2003 and 2006 from the Conseil des arts et des letters du Québec to exhume and re-establish the neglected instrumental works of Marin Marais into the oboist’s repertoire. His latest solo recording, devoted to Marais’ suites for oboe, has received international acclaim and was nominated in 2015 for the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Record Critics’ Award). Christopher took his graduate degree from McGill University in historical oboes, where he studied with the late Bruce Haynes and the late Washington McClain. He is currently pursuing his PhD at the Royal Academy of Music in London (where he is supported by the Canadian Centennial Scholarship Fund’s Belle Shenkman Award for the Study of Arts) and teaches historical oboes at the Sibelius Academy (Helsinki University of Arts).
