Musician Julien Gauthier (44) was travelling along the Mackenzie River in a remote area of Canada last week. He had been recording sounds of nature for a piece that he was working on.
On August 15, 2019, Julien’s travelling partner raised the alarm at 7.45am when he realized that Julien had been dragged away by a grizzly bear. The RCMP sent a helicopter to the area because of bad weather conditions to look for Mr Gauthier and evacuate the travellers. His body was eventually found the next day, reports say.
Unprovoked grizzy bear attacks are very rare.
The Brittany Symphony Orchestra, where Mr Gauthier had been a composer in residence since 2017, paid tribute to him, saying he was “a sensitive, generous and talented man” who had “a sense of adventure, wonder and rare intelligence”.
“It was his dream to go there, to go to the North,” said Ms Toscani.
“He had asked me to take part in this adventure, we had been thinking about it for three years. We were so happy to get to do it. He was a unique artist, inspired by open spaces and nature,” she told Le Parisien newspaper (in French).
Last year, he spent five months recoding sounds in the Kerguelen Islands in Antarctica, and the result of that trip was a piece called Symphonie australe (Southern Symphony), which was broadcast on French radio.