Jean-Sébastien Vallée is prominent among American and Canadian choral conductors and educators, both for his performances and his scholarly research. Vallée earned degrees from the Université Laval, the Université de Sherbrooke, the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he received a doctorate in conducting. The artistic director of the Ottawa Choral Society and director of the Choir of the Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul in Montréal, Vallée is also the director of choral studies and chair of the conducting program at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University. He served as director of choral studies at California State University in Los Angeles, and was on the choral faculty of the University of Redlands. In addition to his interest in choral and orchestral music, Vallée champions contemporary music, commissioning and giving premieres of works by emerging composers, and programming neglected repertoire. As a scholar, his research focuses on French music of the Renaissance, the choral works of Michael Tippett, and aspects of conducting pedagogy. Vallée's performances have been broadcast on CBC and PBS, and he has recorded two albums on the ATMA label, Lux (2017) and Requiem (2018), featuring the works of Gabriel Fauré and Maurice Duruflé. ~ Blair Sanderson