Tara-Louise Montour

Violin - Mishaabooz's Realm

Originally from Kahnawake, Quebec, Tara-Louise Montour is considered North America’s foremost Indigenous classical violinist.

In addition to her fifteen-year tenure with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Tara-Louise has appeared as guest soloist with the Orchestre Métropolitain under Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Hamilton Philharmonic, Symphony New Brunswick, the Thunder Bay Symphony and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, to name a few. A former winner of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM) Strings Competition, Tara-Louise holds a Bachelor of Music degree from McGill University’s Schulich School of Music and a Master of Music degree in Performance from Northern Illinois University.

In 2005, she commissioned and recorded Regent Levasseur’s Farewell to the Warriors with the Thunder Bay Symphony, which earned a Juno nomination. In 2010, Tara-Louise commissioned Malcolm Forsyth’s ‘Trickster Coyote, Lightning Elk’, a work inspired by Native themes.

As an original member of the cast of ‘Mishaabooz’s Realm’ created in 2017 by Cree composer, Andrew Balfour, through a commission by Highlands Opera Studio, supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and Canadian Heritage, Tara-Louise is honoured to be back in Haliburton collaborating on the 2024 revival of this powerful, culturally collaborative project.