Sospeso presented Jacques Hétu's Prelude, Ballade, Final at Seattle's Friesen Fine Art Gallery.

Jacques Hétu is one of the most performed Canadian composers, both within Canada and abroad. After musical studies at the University of Ottawa, he entered the Montreal Conservatory where he studied piano, oboe and composition between 1956 and 1961. During the summer of 1959, Hétu studied composition with Lukas Foss at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood, Massachusetts. In 1961, he obtained a First Prize at the Conservatory and during the same year he recieved three other prizes: the Composition Prize of the Quebec Music Festival, a grant from the Canada Council of the Arts and the Prix D'Europe (a very prestigious prize which had not been awarded to a composer since 1927). These grants allowed him to continue his studies in Paris. He studied composition at the Ecole Normale with Henri Dutilleux where, in 1963, he was awarded a Diplôme d'Excellence. At the same time, he took courses in analysis with Olivier Messiæn at the Paris Conservatory.

The works of Hétu include four symphonies; concertos for piano (1969), bassoon (1979), clarinet (1983), trumpet (1987), ondes martenot (1990), flute (1991), guitar (1994), trombone (1995) and a double concerto for piano and violin (1967); works for voice and orchestra, including Les Abîmes du Rêve (l982) and the Missa pro trecentisimo anno (1985, for the Bach tri-centenary); an opera, Le Prix, as well as several chamber pieces.

In 1990, Pinchas Zukerman invited Jacques Hétu to tour with Ottawa's National Arts Center Orchestra to Germany, Denmark and Great Britain. Zukerman had chosen two of his works: his Third Symphony and Antinomie. In November, 1990, Images de la Révolution (1988), commissioned by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra for the bicentenary of the French Revolution, was performed by the New York Philharmonic, under the direction of Charles Dutoit. In May, 1992, Kurt Mazur and the New York Philharmonic presented the U.S. première of the Trumpet Concerto, with Philip Smith as a soloist.

Glenn Gould, who recorded Jacques Hétu's Piano Variations in 1967, said of him that he used serial techniques with "verve and spontaneity." He noted "a uniquely euphonic approach to serial material" and "an innate theatricality" in his music. The elements of Hétu's style can best be defined as neo-classical forms and neo-romantic expression in a musical language of 20th century techniques. In 1978 he wrote: "The point is not to seek an unimagined way of arranging sounds but rather to find one's own manner of thinking musically. True originality seems to me to be authentic rather than eccentric."

Jacques Hétu lives in Montreal where, since 1979, he teaches at the University of Quebec in Montreal. From 1964 to 1978, he taught at Laval University in Quebec City.

From Les Éditions Doberman-Yppan.