The Montréal Guitar Trio’s “Christmas Around the World” pairs Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker with Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas, a span from the Imperial Russian ballet to mid-century American jazz piano, both refracted through classical guitar and a rotating cast of strings, accordion, and voice. MG3 has been making arguments like this one for over 25 years, and their case rests not on novelty but on execution.
About the Show
Sébastien Deshaies, Glenn Lévesque, and Marc Morin bring the full Christmas Around the World program to Brockville on Thursday, November 26. The Guaraldi selection signals something about the trio’s musical sensibility: A Charlie Brown Christmas is, at its core, a jazz trio record, and MG3’s approach, described as delivering “boundless creativity, dazzling arrangements, and a style that’s all their own,” treats those harmonic materials with the same seriousness they bring to the Tchaikovsky. Additional festive selections complete the program.
What amplifies this beyond a conventional guitar recital is the instrumental vocabulary MG3 brings to the stage. Deshaies, Lévesque, and Morin play on Bruno Boutin’s guitars, but the program also calls up violin, mandolin, bass, and accordion, and they add vocals. That combination is how three players produce what the trio’s own site calls a “dynamic and breathtaking stage presence.” Their broader catalog moves between Morricone, Piazzolla, Mozart, Falla, and Metheny — a range that makes the Tchaikovsky-to-Guaraldi leap in the Christmas program feel less like an anomaly than a natural expression of who they are.
The group released its Christmas album Navid on November 26, 2025 — placing this Brockville performance on the record’s exact first anniversary. Christmas Around the World continues to the National Arts Centre in Ottawa on December 12. Across their career, MG3 has performed at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the BB King Blues Club in New York, and the Smith Center in Las Vegas, a range that reflects the unusual reach acoustic guitar ensemble performance can achieve.
Venue & Logistics
The Brockville Arts Centre sits at 235 King Street West, part of the North Country region. A purpose-built performing arts theater, it offers the concentrated setting this kind of program rewards, from quieter textural passages to what the trio’s materials call “electrifying” and “fiery” live performance. Doors open at 7:00 p.m. for the 7:30 p.m. show.
Tickets
Tickets are $37.40 CAD. Group promotions are available: Buy 4 for $75 or Buy One Get One Free. The performance is all ages. Buy tickets