With a career spanning more than 20 years, Guylaine Lemaire is a renowned violinist and violist, and an experienced arts administrator. In 2013, Guylaine Lemaire was named Executive Director of Thirteen Strings, one of Canada’s few professional chamber orchestras. Since 2017, she is also Artistic Director of the CAMMAC Music Centre, on the shores of lake MacDonald, in the beautiful Laurentians region in Québec. She has performed with many of Canada’s finest musicians, ensembles and orchestras, and has appeared at virtually every major Canadian festival including the Festival de Lanaudière, Festival of the Sound, Festival de musique de Lachine, Musique de chambre à Ste-Pétronille, Festival international du Domaine Forget, The Banff Centre, Festival Canada at the National Arts Centre and the Music and Beyond Festival in Ottawa.
Her recordings with the Chamber Players of Canada have all received strong acclaim in Canada and abroad, and are heard regularly on the radio. She has performed across Canada and around the world with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in their first violin, second violin and viola sections. She has also performed and toured with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and with the chamber orchestra, Thirteen Strings. She is much in demand as a committee member for juries at the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.
She is married to cellist Julian Armour, who is Artistic and Executive Director of the Music and Beyond Festival in Ottawa (and Principal Cellist of Thirteen Strings), and adjunct professor at the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University, where he teaches a course on “Managing the Arts”. They have a busy household with their four sons: Francis, Pascal, Mathis and Philippe.