MONTREAL — Baritone Laureano Quant had a clean sweep at the Art Song Prize Finals of the Concours musical international de Montréal held at the Salle Bourgie on May 31. The Colombian-born baritone returns to Chicago, where he makes his home, with a cash prize of CAD $10,000 for winning the Art Song Prize and the promise of a return engagement in Montreal as the recipient of the Salle Bourgie Schubert Prize. All this for someone who never imagined winning an art song competition when he started studying voice.
The competition was founded in 2001 by André Bourbeau, a Canadian politician who devoted much of his life to supporting young musicians, and the late Canadian bass Joseph Rouleau, who notably partnered with Joan Sutherland at the Royal Opera House in London, the Paris Opéra, and on tour in Australia. The event rotates on a three-year cycle of voice, violin, and piano. The award winners of Voice 2025 will receive prizes and grants valued at over CAD $160,000. As with the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World, the Montreal event awards an art-song prize, as well as one in the aria competition.
Twenty-four singers were invited to Montreal to compete in Voice 2025, selected from 348 applicants from 43 countries. Sopranos Julia Muzychenko-Greenhalgh and Fanny Soyer, mezzo-soprano Fleuranne Brockway, and baritone Theodore Platt vied with Quant for the Art Song Prize in the finals. Each performed an approximately 25-minute set of songs by composers ranging from Schubert to William Bolcom. Adrianne Pieczonka led the jury, which included Harolyn Blackwell, Iain Burnside, Etienne Dupuis, Anthony Freud, Roberto Mauro, Christina Scheppelmann, and Delores Ziegler.
This year’s winner of the Art Song Prize earned his undergraduate degrees in composition and vocal performance from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia, and received master’s degrees from Yale University and the Manhattan School of Music. He participated in Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Ryan Opera Center, the Merola Opera Program at San Francisco Opera, and SongStudio at Carnegie Hall. In 2024, he appeared with the Stuttgart Opera, and he has upcoming performances with Dallas Opera and Wolf Trap Opera.
At the competition, which was held during the annual meeting of the Music Critics Association of North America, Quant performed songs by Finzi, Vaughan Williams, Schubert, and Poulenc. He is a singer who does more than create a private world. He lives the experience, probing the meaning of each word and note he sings through subtle brushstrokes of vocal color and dynamic shadings.
In “Come Away Death’ from Finzi’s cycle Let Us Garlands Bring, Quant expressed anger over an unrequited love with somber elegance. In the final lines, there was a beguiling sweetness tinged with regret as he sang of a grave so remote that no other “sad true lover” would ever happen upon it.
As in the Finzi songs, Quant performed “Silent Noon” from Vaughan Williams’ The House of Life with immaculate enunciation. He expressed the two lovers’ blissful connection with nature on a summer’s day in broad, sweeping lines that displayed the warmth and richness of his voice. His sotto voce singing in the final line, “When twofold silence was the song of love,” was effortless and pure.
Quant delved deep into the drama of “Der Doppelgänger” from Schubert’s Schwanengesang, in which his facial expressions were as expressive as his singing. It was the only song of the seven that Quant performed in which he unleashed the full power of his voice — first in outrage when he sees a man standing at the door of the house where his beloved once lived and then in terror when he realizes that the man is him.
To conclude his set, Quant etched three musical portraits from Poulenc’s Le travail du peintre with sophistication and wit. These songs best revealed the deftness with which he can capture mood and character. In “Georges Braque,” Quant’s nonchalant approach paired perfectly with the song’s gentle lyricism, while “Juan Gris” was special for the singer’s pinpoint rhythms. He executed the quicksilver changes of tempo and mood in “Joan Miró” with remarkable breeziness.
Reflecting on his success, Quant expressed his gratitude for being invited to sing in Voice 2025. “To be chosen from a pool of almost 400 singers who are at the top level was already a huge honor. And even more from a pool of competitors who are working in important theaters and have won or placed in very prestigious competitions.” This “beautiful moment,” as he described it, was not only a recognition of his artistry but also a tribute to the people who invested in him as a singer.
