Palais Montcalm

Inaugurated on October 21, 1932 on Place D'Youville, the Palais Montcalm is Quebec City's great music hall. Designed by architects Gabriel Desmeules, Ludger Robitaille and Joseph-Léon Pinsonnault as a Depression-era public works project, the building presents a restrained and elegant Art Deco facade that has endured the decades without losing its character.

An Art Deco facade preserved

The Palais Montcalm stands on the site of an earlier public market, the Halle Montcalm, which had animated Place D'Youville since 1877. The 1932 building adopts an aesthetic of restraint: clean lines, stylized ornaments, pale limestone. Working within the financial constraints of the Depression, the architects produced a building of classical dignity without ostentation — one the City of Quebec has since designated as having "superior heritage value."

When the building was renovated in 2007, the decision was made to preserve the original facade entirely intact. The interior, however, was rebuilt from the ground up.

The 2007 rebirth

By the early 2000s, the Palais Montcalm was showing its age: the original concert hall, designed for some 1,400 spectators, offered poor acoustics and outdated technical equipment. In 2002, the City of Quebec and the provincial government launched the "Maison de la musique" project — a commitment to transform the building into a hall dedicated to acoustic excellence.

Construction, entrusted to the M.U.S.E. Consortium under lead architect Jacques Plante, began in the summer of 2004. Despite a fire during construction and cost overruns that brought the final bill above $23 million, the new hall opened on March 17, 2007, with an inaugural concert by Les Violons du Roy. The project received the Special Jury Prize at the Quebec City Architecture Awards in 2007.

Salle Raoul-Jobin: acoustics by design

At the heart of the project is the Salle Raoul-Jobin, rebuilt to seat 979 in a classic shoebox configuration — the rectangular shape favoured for orchestral and chamber music acoustics. The walls are made of plywood boxes filled with olivine sand and faced with maple veneer panels. A motorized acoustic canopy allows the reverberation time to be adjusted for different repertoires. Individual air vents beneath each seat ensure silent ventilation.

The hall is named after Quebec-born tenor Raoul Jobin (1906–1974), one of the great voices of the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Paris Opera during the 1930s and 1940s. Jobin had sung at the Palais Montcalm's inaugural concert in 1932; the hall has borne his name since 1988.

The Casavant organ, Opus 3896

On September 11, 2013, a mechanical-action concert organ was inaugurated on the Salle Raoul-Jobin stage by organist Richard Paré with Les Violons du Roy. Built by Casavant Frères (Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec), Opus 3896 has 3 manuals, 37 stops, 51 ranks and 2,846 pipes. Its design draws on the Baroque organs of Gottfried Silbermann — the builder most favoured by J.S. Bach. The console is mounted on casters and can be repositioned on stage for different programmes.

Three spaces, one house

Palais Montcalm offers three complementary performance spaces. The Salle Raoul-Jobin (979 seats) hosts chamber, orchestral and vocal concerts. The Salle D'Youville (up to 175 seats) is a modular, naturally lit space suited to intimate recitals, lectures and private events. Chez Madame Belley (75 seated, 120 standing), opened in November 2021 with a terrace looking out over Place D'Youville, is dedicated to emerging Quebec artists. It is named after Henriette Belley, a legendary seamstress and fortune teller of the 1960s and 70s, and a devoted patron of the Palais Montcalm.

Les Violons du Roy, ensemble in residence

Since the 2007 reopening, Les Violons du Roy have made Palais Montcalm their home. Founded in 1984 by Bernard Labadie, this internationally renowned string ensemble specialises in Baroque and Classical repertoire from the 17th and 18th centuries. They are joined by their affiliated choir, La Chapelle de Québec. The broader Palais Montcalm programming extends well beyond early music: classical, jazz, world music, folk and progressive music all share the stage throughout the season.