Six months after his tragic death, the renowned Canadian conductor Boris Brott will be celebrated in a tribute concert that reflects the diversity of his career and interests.

Boris: His Life in Music will open the 83rd season of the Orchestre Classique de Montréal (OCM) on Oct.18. Brott was artistic director of the OCM and heir to the musical ensemble his parents Alexander and Lotte Brott founded in 1939 as the McGill Chamber Orchestra.

The music world was shocked in April when Brott, a still vital 78, was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver in Hamilton, Ont., where Brott had lived for many years.

The program is eclectic but carefully chosen to encompass milestones and influences in Brott’s career, especially the early years, as well as express his unflagging spirit, said OCM executive director Taras Kulish who put it together.

Geneviève Leclair, a protégée of Brott’s, is the conductor, one of the many young musicians he mentored.

The concert will open with Max Bruch’s Kol Nidrei, a beloved 19th-century work based on the Yom Kippur prayer, selected to emphasize how fundamental his Jewishness was to Brott.

Cellist Stéphane Tétreault is the soloist. His now internationally recognized career was launched by Brott when he was just 12 years old.

Next up are three songs from a new musical by Canadian Indigenous playwright Thomson Highway. The (Post) Mistress is about a woman in small-town Ontario who lives vicariously through the letters that pass through her hands.

These selections were specially arranged for an OCM recording made at the invitation of Radio-Canada for broadcast last November to mark Highway’s 70th birthday. This would be Brott’s last recording.

They will be performed live for the first time at the concert by soprano Elizabeth Polese.

Kulish explained that Brott was sensitive to Indigenous peoples long before Canada’s belated awareness of its shameful history, and committed to providing Indigenous musicians with an opportunity to flourish.

“This regard came from a genuine place, learned first from his father,” said Kulish. “I’m sitting here in Alexander’s old office, surrounded by Indigenous paintings of his. He was ahead of his time.”

The concert will take another unexpected turn with Mexican composer Manuel Ponce’s Concierto del sur.

The teenaged Brott, uncertain about whether he wanted to make music his life’s work despite being a trained violinist and his family’s expectations, travelled to Mexico to consider his future, said Kulish. There he became a student of composer and conductor Igor Markevitch who inspired the young Montrealer’s career path.

Kulish said Latin American music, especially guitar, held a special place in Brott’s heart for the rest of his life. Guitarist Tariq Harb, a Jordanian-Canadian with Palestinian roots, will be the soloist for Concierto del Sur.

The next piece, the third movement of Astral Visions by Alexander Brott, was a natural choice, said Kulish, as the younger Brott was a faithful champion of his father’s works and contemporary work in general.

The concert concludes with excerpts from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, another must for any such tribute because Brott served as assistant to the great American conductor at the New York Philharmonic in 1968-1969, and learned much of his craft from him.

Polese returns with tenor Antonio Figueroa to perform favourite songs from this timeless musical.

The evening will be hosted by the legendary Sylvia L’Écuyer who retired from Radio-Canada in June after hosting and producing its classical music programming, notably Place à l’opéra. She and Brott were colleagues in the promotion of classical music, and sat together on the advisory council to the Azrieli Music Prizes.

 Kulish said his own association with Brott was gratifyingly collaborative and grew into a strong personal, as well as professional, relationship.

“From the first day I became executive director of the (then) McGill Chamber Orchestra about 10 years ago, I had an excellent working relationship with Maestro Brott,” he said.

“There was a complementary quality to our work, an affinity with each other which is quite rare between artistic directors and executive directors. This may have been because I had been an opera singer, a fellow musician, and not only an administrator.

“We spoke on the phone five or 10 times a day, so his loss so suddenly and tragically was quite devastating. This will be a celebration of a man who touched so many lives. We received thousands of comments from people who said he gave them their first chance. This will forever be Maestro Brott’s legacy.”

Boris: His Life in Music takes place at Salle Pierre-Mercure Oct. 18 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets available at orchestra.ca. A complimentary ticket for a child 12 and under is available with each adult ticket purchase.

In addition to the regular admission, tickets may be purchased at a higher price as a fundraiser for the OCM and include a post-concert reception catered by the Snowdon Deli.