Alexis Basque is a graduate of the Conservatoire de musique du Québec, where he received his formal training in modern trumpet performance and began his first foray into composition and orchestration.
He picked up the Baroque trumpet in 2005 in an attempt to better understand the origins of his instrument and in order to familiarize himself with historically-informed performance practices. He was then able to deepen his knowledge by attending the Mozarteum Sommerakademie of Salzburg with Susan Williams in 2012, and was introduced to the world of natural brass playing while working with renowned trumpet and natural horn players Graham Nicholson and Jean-François Madeuf. The discovery of the practice of instrumental doubling, as commonly seen in the baroque period, compelled him to add the baroque horn and tromba da tirarsi to his arsenal of instruments.
Alexis is an avid performer of Baroque music, playing and recording regularly with Montréal’s most active and innovative ensembles, including the Ensemble Caprice, the Bande Montréal Baroque, les Idées Heureuses, the Theater of Early Music, la Nef and the Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal.
Outside of Quebec, he has performed with the Toronto’s Schola Cantorum, Aradia Ensemble, Thirteen Strings and the Pacific Baroque Festival Orchestra. In 2013 he was invited to play in the Ensemble Barrocade of Tel-Aviv’s Israeli tour of the music of J.S. Bach, and he has performed with the Bach Society of Minnesota since 2016 on both horn and trumpet.
