A conductor counts the changes after cancer

Bernard Labadie returns next month to the ensemble he founded, Les Violons du Roy, after an absence of nearly two years. In the interim, he has hovered between life and death.

In a startlingly frank conversation with Arthur Kapitainis, Bernard, 52, talks about conversations with death, life after coma and the fallacies of cancer terminology. ‘When you say you fight a cancer and you win the battle and you’re a winner, does that make the ones who lose the battle losers? I don’t think so.’

Labadie no longer uses a baton. ‘There you can see it,’ he said, holding his right hand out in front of him. ‘The anti-rejection medication that I take makes me shake all the time.’

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