Yuli Turovsky

Prize-winning Soviet-born Canadian cellist, conductor and teacher Yuli Turovsky was born in Moscow on 7 June 1939. He began to learn the cello at seven and studied at the Moscow Conservatoire between 1957 and 1969. He led the cello section of Rudolf Barshai's Moscow Chamber Orchestra and conducted the chamber orchestra at a local school.

Leaving Russia in 1976, he founded the Borodin Trio with two fellow ex-pat Russians (Rostislav Dubinsky and Luba Edlina) and settled in Montreal the following year. By 1983 he and his wife Eleonara had made enough contacts, mainly through teaching, to found the I Musici de Montreal Chamber Orchestra, which then toured and recorded extensively with Turovsky at the helm.

Turovsky retired from conducting I Musici in 2011, due to bad health, and he died in Montreal on 15 January 2013, aged seventy-three.

A selection of articles about Yuli Turovsky

Ensemble. Real Poise - Sinfonia Viva at the Buxton Festival, enjoyed by Mike Wheeler