Douglas McNabney

Canadian violist Douglas McNabney is a major force in North American chamber and orchestral music as a player, educator, and impresario. McNabney was born into a large Irish immigrant family in Toronto and grew up on the city's edges in what was then the suburb of Etobicoke. His family was not particularly musical, and his first lessons on the piano came in public school, on a cardboard keyboard. His high school music program was a strong one, and he has said: "It distresses me to think that the opportunities I enjoyed as a young person are no longer offered to young people today." After playing piano, drums, and violin, McNabney attended the University of Toronto, earning a degree not in any of these instruments, but in musicology. He switched to viola, earning a Master's at the University of Western Ontario and going on for a Doctorate at the Université de Montréal. McNabney served from 1983 to 1986 as principal violist of the Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, often playing solo parts such as that in Berlioz's Harold in Italy. McNabney became the artistic director of Quebec's Domaine Forget Music Festival and Academy in 2001 and assumed the chairmanship of McGill University's performance department in 2004. He has continued to teach viola at McGill while also returning to English Canada as director of the Toronto Summer Music Festival and Academy since 2010. McNabney has played chamber music with a wide variety of North American groups including the Allegri Quartet, the Orford Quartet, the Smithsonian Chamber Players, the Lafayette Quartet, and the Galliard Ensemble. He has appeared on several string trio recordings on the Oxingale label, including one of Bach's Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, and, in 2018, a reissued performance (with Jonathan Crow and Matt Haimovitz) of Mozart's Divertimento for string trio in E flat major, K. 563, and Preludes and Fugues, K. 404a. ~ James Manheim