Claude Lapalme

Music Director

Claude Lapalme is a Juno Award-winning conductor, as well as a noted arranger, orchestrator, and composer. He was born in Montreal in 1962 and trained at the University of Toronto and the Royal Conservatory of The Hague in the Netherlands. Since his appointment as Music Director of the Red Deer Symphony Orchestra in 1990, Claude Lapalme has made his mark as a superb conductor and an outstanding Music Director. As he embarks on his 36th season as Music Director of the Red Deer Symphony Orchestra, he holds the distinction of having the third longest tenure as Music Director of a professional Symphony Orchestra in Canada.

As a conductor, Paris newspaper Le Figaro has called him “remarkable and superb”; the Toronto Globe & Mail, “assured and highly effective”; the Havana Granma, “surprisingly dexterous, warm and sincere”; the Edmonton Journal, “a breath of fresh air”; and the Calgary Herald, “vigorous and attentive to detail.” A 1991 Laureate of the Besançon International Conducting Competition, he has conducted orchestras around the world, including the Moscow Radio and Television Orchestra as well as numerous ensembles in Hungary, the United States, Cuba, France, the UK and the Netherlands.