Art Song Lab Artists: 2012

ASL Program Co-Director: Composer, Michael Park

Michael Park is an artist who values innovation, sincerity, and communication. He is co-founder of Art Song Lab, an innovative program that teams composers with poets. The resultant art songs are workshopped and premiered as part of the Vancouver International Song Institute's SONGFIRE festival in partnership with the Canadian Music Centre.

He is currently working on his Doctorate of Musical Arts at The University of British Columbia under the supervision of Dorothy Chang. While pursuing undergraduate studies in piano, Michael's involvement with improvisation and multi-disciplinary collaboration led him to studies in composition. He continues to collaborate with a wide variety of artists, including dancers, poets, visual artists, and musicians.

Michael has written for choirs, vocalists, pianists, chamber ensembles and, as a pianist, regularly performs his own works, as well as those of his colleagues. Michael’s compositions have been performed in Vancouver at the Sonic Boom Music Festival and the Songfire Festival of Song, as well as concerts presented by Music on Main and the Composers’ Collective. His music has been presented in Winnipeg by Flipside Opera and the Contemporary Opera Lab, and in New York by Opera On Tap.

ASL Program Co-Director: Pianist, Alison d'Amato

Pianist Alison d'Amato is a dynamic and versatile musician, committed to performing and teaching in the full spectrum of solo and chamber music genres. A member of several pioneering organizations, she is Artistic Co-Director of Florestan Recital Project (www.florestanproject.org) and co-founder of the Vancouver International Song Institute (VISI, www.songinstitute.ca). In 2011, she joined the faculty at Eastman School of Music as Assistant Professor of Vocal Coaching. In all these activities, Alison is dedicated to energizing the relationships and communication inherent in music and bringing students’ love of music to the forefront of their projects.

Alison enjoys a variety of interdisciplinary projects with musicologists, composers, writers, and dancers. Alison is co-creator of the 2011 Art Song Lab, a new partnership between VISI and the Canadian Music Centre (Vancouver) that presents new works in collaboration with composers, poets, and performers. Alison has been a guest artist at numerous schools including The American University in Bulgaria, University of Toronto, Tufts University, Royal Conservatory of Music, Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, SUNY Fredonia, Boston University, and Boston Conservatory. In addition to traditional masterclasses in collaborative repertoire, Alison has shared classes with colleagues such as musicologist Barbara Heyman, English professor David Ball, singers Lynne McMurtry and Aaron Engebreth, and flutist Barry Crawford. From 2006-2011, she was Visiting Assistant Professor at University at Buffalo, working directly with colleagues to create and enhance collaborations and chamber activities in the music department.

Alison has performed at venues across North America, including Boston’s Jordan and Symphony Halls and New York’s Weill Recital Hall. The 2012-13 season features a wide variety of activities in new and established repertoire including reappearances with the Buffalo Chamber Players, several recitals with saxophonist Wildy Zumwalt, and original interdisciplinary projects at Eastman and VISI.

Alison received the Grace B. Jackson Prize from Tanglewood Music Center acknowledging her 'extraordinary commitment of talent and energy.'

ASL Program Co-Director: Writer, Ray Hsu

Dr. Ray Hsu is co-founder of Art Song Lab and the Medici Group.

Dr. Hsu has published over 150 written works in over 50 publications internationally.
He is the author of two award-winning books of poetry: Anthropy (winner of the Gerald Lampert Award and shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award in Poetry) and Cold Sleep Permanent Afternoon (winner of an Alcuin Award).

He has been a faculty member at the Banff Centre, the SFU Writers Studio, and UBC Creative Writing. He also taught writing for over two years in a US prison.

ASL 2013: Guest Composer, Jocelyn Morlock

Photo credit: Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

Juno-nominated composer Jocelyn Morlock is one of Canada’s most distinctive voices. “A lyrical wonder, exquisite writing” with “an acute feeling for sonority” and an approach that is “deftly idiomatic” (Vancouver Sun), Morlock’s music has received numerous accolades, including: Top 10 at the 2002 International Rostrum of Composers; Winner of the 2003 CMC Prairie Region Emerging Composers competition; winner of the Mayor’s Arts Awards in Vancouver (2008); two nominations for Best Classical Composition at the Western Canadian Music Awards (2006, 2010) and most recently a Juno Nomination for Classical Composition of the Year (2011, Exaudi.) She is currently serving as inaugural Composer-in-Residence for Vancouver’s innovative concert series, Music on Main.

Morlock’s international career was launched at the 1999 International Society for Contemporary Music’s World Music Days with Romanian performances of her quartet Bird in the Tangled Sky. Since then, she has become the composer of record for significant music competitions, including the 2008 Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition and the 2005 Montreal International Music Competition, for which she wrote Amore, a tour de force vocal work that has gone on to receive more than 70 performances and numerous radio broadcasts.
Highlights of the past year’s premieres include Three Meditations on Light, written for the debut concert of the Couloir duo at Music on Main’s Modulus Festival; Luft, a 35-minute music and dance production with choreography by Simone Orlando, featuring Josh Beamish and the dancers of MOVE: The Company, written for Turning Point Ensemble’s Rio Tinto Alcan prize-winning production Firebird 2011; In Situ, a large-scale collaboration with the Aeriosa Dance Ensemble premiered during the 2010 Cultural Olympiad and attended by over 7000 people; Theft for Standing Wave’s Too Strange…an exploration of magical realism in music, and two CBC commissions: Asylum, a piano trio written for the 10th anniversary of the Tuckamore Chamber Music Festival and the 200th anniversary of Robert Schumann’s birth; and The Jack Pine, written for The Gallery Project, a partnership between Music and Beyond, CBC Radio Two and the National Gallery of Canada.

New CD releases featuring Morlock’s work include musica intima’s Into Light, (nominated for two 2010 Western Canadian Music Awards and two 2011 Juno Awards: Classical Album of the Year, and Classical Composition of the Year for Morlock’s Exaudi), Fringe Percussion’s eponymous debut album (nominated for a 2010 Western Canadian Music Award), pianist Rachel Iwaasa’s Cosmphony, and the Canadian Chamber Choir’s In Good Company. Other notable, recent releases include Tiresias Duo’s Delicate Fires (nominated for a 2008 Western Canadian Music Award), Trio Verlaine’s Fin de Siècle and the Canadian Music Centre’s So You Want To Write A Fugue (“the most exciting disc of new Canadian music in years” – The Toronto Star).
Jocelyn Morlock completed a Bachelor of Music in piano performance at Brandon University, studying with pianist Robert Richardson. She received both a Master’s degree and a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of British Columbia. Among her teachers were Gerhard Ginader, Pat Carrabré, Stephen Chatman, Keith Hamel, and the late Russian-Canadian composer Nikolai Korndorf.

ASL 2013: Guest Poet, Betsy Warland

Creative nonfiction writer, poet, essayist, teacher, manuscript consultant, and editor Betsy Warland was born in the United States in 1946. Betsy immigrated to Canada in 1973, becoming a citizen in
1980. Warland has published eleven books of creative nonfiction and poetry.

Dedicated to emerging writers, Betsy is the former director of The Writer’s Studio, part of Simon Fraser University’s Writing and Communications Program (2000 -2011). She currently directs and is
a mentor in her own five-month manuscript development program, Vancouver Manuscript Intensive. Betsy is on faculty in both programs.

An active member of The Writers’ Union of Canada, Betsy serves on the National Council and is the co-founder, along with Myrna Kostash, of the Creative Nonfiction Collective. Her archives are in the
National Library of Canada.

Perhaps most known for her language-focused writing and ways of working with silence, Betsy finds as much meaning in scoring blank space on the page as she does in inscribing written language. The
unsayable, the secreted, the unknowable: these are her obsessions –how we encounter them in lover relationships, family, a homophobic society, a mono-truth society and the inner work of spiritual practice.

Currently, Betsy is working on a lyric prose manuscript “Oscar of Between”.

ASL 2013: Mezzo-Soprano, Lynne McMurtry

Described as “a force of nature” (Toronto Star) and “an actress of immense talent” (Opera Canada), mezzo-soprano Lynne McMurtry is an exciting and vibrant performer, possessing a rich and generous instrument. Her growing career spans the breadth of classical music genres, from opera and oratorio through art song and new music. She has performed with the Boston Symphony, the Winnipeg Symphony, the Edmonton Symphony, Opera Ontario, Edmonton Opera and Manitoba Opera, and at many of the major festivals, including Tanglewood, Ravinia, Banff, and Aldeburgh. Conductors with whom she has performed include Seiji Ozawa, Robert Spano, Jean-Marie Zeitouni, James Meena, Howard Dyck, Kevin Mallon, Wayne Strongman, Robert Cooper, and Lorraine Vaillancourt.

On the operatic stage, Lynne’s vocal and theatrical versatility has won her excellent reviews in such diverse roles as Mistress Quickly in Falstaffwith Edmonton Opera, Arsace in Rossini’s Semiramide and Mme. de Croissy in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, both with Opera in Concert, and Olga in Evgeny Onegin. Other performances include Gertrude in Roméo et Juliette with Opera Hamilton, Marthe in Gounod’sFaust with Calgary Opera, and a return to Opera in Concert to sing the title role in Handel’s Tamerlano. In the past few seasons, Lynne has been featured in no less than seven Canadian operas, including three premieres. Her highly acclaimed and multi-faceted performance in Tapestry New Opera Works’ 2004 "Opera to Go" was broadcast on CBC Radio.

Lynne’s warm, opulent sound and keen musical intelligence have brought her acclaim in a wealth of opera and orchestral concert repertoire. Concert appearances include Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass with the Edmonton Symphony, Handel’s Messiah with both the Charleston Symphony Orchestra and the Kitchener Waterloo Philharmonic Chorus, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Kingston Symphony, Raminsh’sMagnificat with Chorus Niagara, Elijah with the Newfoundland Symphony, Mahler’s Rückert Lieder with the Winnipeg Symphony, and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with the Eastman Faculty Players.

Lynne is an active recitalist and has sung at many distinguished song venues, including Tanglewood, Ravinia, and the Vancouver International Song Institute, where she collaborated with renowned pianist Margo Garrett. Her recital with pianist Alison d’Amato exploring settings of the poetry of Walt Whitman earned her a rave review in the Toronto Star, which stated that “Art doesn’t get any more moving than this.” Her many premieres include the world premiere of Conquering the Fury of Oblivionby Augusta Read Thomas, the Canadian premiere of Ned Rorem’s Evidence of Things Not Seen, and the North American premiere of Judith Weir’s The Voice of Desire. Her discography includes Vivaldi’s La Griseldaand Nisi Dominus, both recorded with Aradia Ensemble and Kevin Mallon, conductor.

Lynne grew up in Vernon, British Columbia, and attended the University of British Columbia, the Eastman School of Music, and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama, where she was a winner of the Opera Trust Scholarship. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Voice at the State University of New York College at Fredonia.

ASL 2013: Baritone, Aaron Engebreth

AARON ENGEBRETH (baritone), acclaimed for his "exemplary diction and rich baritone voice," maintains an active solo career in opera, oratorio and recital, and has devoted considerable energy and time to the performance of new music, often collaborating with composers. Mr. Engebreth has recently been featured with groups and venues such as the American Bach Soloists, Tanglewood Music Festival, Boston Baroque, Santa Fe Pro Musica, Miami Bach Society, the Boston Early Music Festival, Musicians of the Old Post Road, the Providence Singers, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Opera Aperta, the Melrose Symphony, the Back Bay Chorale, the Orchestra of St. Peter's and the Boston Academy of Music. He has received significant recognition for his interpretation of early music, most recently as a national finalist and place-winner in the 2002 American Bach Society/Bethlehem Bach Competition. As a 2000 fellow with the Pacific Music festival in Sapporo, Japan, Mr. Engebreth was featured in their performances of Handel's Alexander's Feast and Bach's Magnificat. He regularly appears with Emmanuel Music on their famed Bach Cantata series. Other notable solo engagements include Haydn's Creation under the baton of the late Robert Shaw and recently, the role of Lidio in Cavalli's L'Egisto under the musical direction of Martin Pearlman. Mr. Engebreth has performed extensively as a recitalist on the concert series of the Longy School of Music, Marsh Chapel at Boston University, the Boston Public Library, King's Chapel, the Old South Church of Boston where he took part in an acclaimed performance of the rarely heard AIDS Quilt Songbook, and recently with WCRB's Concerts at Copley Square, at which he appeared with Keith Lockhart, conductor of the Boston Pops performing works of Richard Rogers with Mr. Lockhart at the piano. A committed interpreter of contemporary music, Mr. Engebreth collaborates frequently with composers, most recently working in preparation with Ned Rorem on the Boston premiere of his evening-length song cycle Evidence of Things Not Seen with the Florestan Recital Project. The critically acclaimed performance, noting Mr. Engebreth's "beauty of voice and eloquence,"(Boston Globe) was repeated in June 2003 in Providence, Rhode Island as part of the Red House Festival. On the operatic stage, Mr. Engebreth has performed a variety of roles ranging from Count Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro to Schaunard in La Boheme. His performance of Sid in the Red House Opera Group's 2002 performances of Britten's Albert Herring was described by the Boston Globe as, "nearly perfect in voice, characterization and appearance," and Opera News hailed his recent performance as Masetto in Opera Aperta's Don Giovanni as "consistently strong." Mr. Engebreth's other 2002-03 engagements include performances with the Tanglewood Music Festival, Opera Aperta, Red House Opera Group, Boston Cecilia, Santa Fe Pro Musica, Miami Bach Society, Opera Unlimited (Boston Academy of Music/Boston Modern Orchestra Project), the Providence Singers, the Rhode Island Civic Orchestra and Chorus, Back Bay Chorale and the American Bach Soloists. He also appeared as a vocal fellow at the Ravinia Music Festival's Steans Institute for Singers in August 2003. In September of 2003, Mr. Engebreth made his debut with the Handel and Haydn Society as a soloist in their production of Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 and will also perform Ned Rorem's Santa Fe Songs with the composer at the piano with the Terezin Chamber Music Society that will culminate in the world-premiere recording of the work. Mr. Engebreth is on the music faculties of Tufts University and the Community Music Center of Boston and is a founding member and co-artistic director of the Florestan Recital Project. He is an alumnus of Viterbo College and received a Master's Degree from Boston University. He can be heard on the upcoming releases of Conrad Susa's Carols and Lullabies on Arsis Records and on Lukas Foss' Griffelkin with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project on the Chandos label.

ASL 2013: Pianist, Corey Hamm

Dr. Corey Hamm is both an internationally performing pianist and Assistant Professor of Piano and Chamber Music at The University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada. He is Director of the UBC Contemporary Players and joined the faculty of UBC in Fall 2005.

Hamm is pianist with the prominent new music ensemble The Nu:BC Collective. With Nu:BC ("a delightfully diverse evening of sights and sounds" - Georgia Straight) he has performed multimedia concerts of works by Gyorgy Ligeti, Howard Bashaw, George Crumb, Gyorgy Kurtag, and many others. The Nu:BC Collective is proud to have been a part of Vancouver Pro Musica’s Sonic Boom new music festival for the last three years, premiering dozens of works by Vancouver composers.

Hamm is also a founding member of the Canadian two-piano, two-percussion ensemble Hammerhead Consort, formed in 1990, and winners of such important Canadian awards as the Sir Ernest Macmillan Memorial Foundation Chamber Music Award (1992), and the CIBC National Music Competition (1991), as well as the 1993 ARIA Award for Best Classical Recording.

ASL 2013: Pianist, Steven Philcox

Quickly gaining recognition as one of Canada's finest collaborators, pianist Steven Philcox has performed with many of our most renowned singers including Richard Margison, Jean Stillwell, and Isabel Bayrakdarian. Recital appearances have taken him to many of North America's greatest concert halls, including his 1998 debut at Carnegie Hall (Weill Hall) in association with the American Society for Contemporary Opera and Song. Further recital appearances have included Los Angeles and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, New York. His debut recording with Canadian soprano Martha Guth features the works of Debussy, Crumb, and Messaien. Steven has participated in the Music Academy of the West, Santa Barbara, and The Banff Centre's Twentieth Century Opera and Song Festival. He was also on staff at Chautauqua's 1999 Summer Institute. Steven spent several summers teaching and performing in the Aria International Summer Academy in London, Ontario.

A graduate of the University of British Columbia, Steven received his Master of Music degree from the Manhattan School of Music, where he was a scholarship student of internationally renowned pianist Warren Jones. He has served as vocal coach, répétiteur, and assistant conductor with the Canadian Opera Company and is on the faculty of The Glenn Gould School of The Royal Conservatory.

ASL 2013: Tenor, William George

Tenor William George has performed with many international musical organizations, including Los Angeles Opera, San Francisco Opera, New York City Opera, Hong Kong Arts Festival, the Savonlinna (Finland) Festival, the Aldeburgh (England) Festival, the Stockholm Tonsattarfestival, Philippines Symphony, Elysium Festival and at Carnegie Hall. He has toured the country as Count Almaviva with New York City Opera, and as Don Ottavio with Western Opera Theater.

Recent performances include the world premiere of Enigma by electronic composer BarryTruax (a work that was composed for him) with Vancouver New Music, Der Kaiser von Atlantis and Carmina Burana with City Opera Vancouver, Messiah with Victoria Symphony, and concerts with Vancouver International Song Institute, Vancouver Chamber Choir, and Erato Ensemble.

As a recitalist, Mr. George has appeared in the U.S., England, and Sweden, and has been featured in a recital for Japan’s NHK network television. His recordings include Geometrics by L.Warde and Brent Michael David's Viola Jokes, with acclaimed violist Melia Watras. A specialist in contemporary music, Mr. George has sung several prestigious North American premieres, including the role of Hermes in Sir Michael Tippett's King Priam, Edgar Allen Poe in Augusta Read Thomas’ Ligeia, and Kenneth Leighton’s Symphony #3. He also received acclaim for his performances of Tippett’s song cycles at Tippett festivals in Stockholm and Sacramento, and Benjamin Lees’ Echoes of Normandy. A recent pet project was the research and performance of the complete vocal works of South African composer Priaulx Rainier.

Mr. George received his Masters of Music degree from the University of Southern California, where he was honored as Outstanding Graduate from the school of music.

Also a composer, William's songs and vocal chamber works have been performed in Canada, the United States and Europe. He recently was honored with induction to the Canadian Music Centre as Associate Composer. Visit his publishing website at www.arrowsongs.com

ASL 2013: Soprano, Phoebe MacRae

An “intelligent musician with an uncommonly lovely voice,” Canadian soprano Phoebe MacRae enjoys a busy and varied musical career. Ms MacRae marries her musical excellence with her love for the theatre, engaging the world of opera, recital and modern music with flair and humour. A versatile and dynamic artist, Ms. MacRae is equally adept at performing the standard classical repertoire as well as comedic and contemporary roles. Included in her repertoire is a solo recital of unaccompanied vocal works: truly a musical “high wire” event.

In 1999, Ms. MacRae formed LEAVE IT TO DIVA with fellow soprano and comedienne Karen Ydenberg. Joined by collaborative pianist Erika Switzer, LEAVE IT TO DIVA combines musical prowess with a gift for quirky humour, creating a rollicking theatrical experience.

Phoebe’s latest comic creation is the acclaimed Animal Passions: Romping the Romantic Realms with renowned collaborative pianist Rena Sharon, with whom Ms. MacRae has worked closely for many years. Animal Passions debuted at the Vancouver International Song Institute in 2007. It has been charming audiences across British Columbia and in the United States of America ever since. Animal Passions combines musical Masterclasses and Lecturesy with high entertainment value. Using carefully chosen songs (such as Ravel’s “The Peacock”, Cole Porter’s “The Tale of the Oyster”, and Richard Pearson Thomas’ “Spider Legs”) and clever dialogue, the program documents the joys and disappointments of a budding young romantic.

Ms. MacRae is regularly engaged for opera, chamber music, oratorio and recital performances. With a Masterclasses and Lecturesy of the 17th – 21st century repertoire, she has performed throughout North America and Europe, and is frequently heard on regional and national CBC Radio 2 broadcasts. In standard operatic repertoire, Ms. MacRae has appeared in works by R. Strauss, J. Strauss, Rossini, and Mozart. She created the role of Pélagie in the world premiere of 120 Songs for the Marquis de Sade, by Peter Hannon and Peter Hinton. Phoebe made her European debut singing Mozart’s most acclaimed virtuosic role of the “Die Königin der Nacht” in Opava, Czech Republic. She was an Artistic Associate of the Modern Baroque Opera Company, and performed leading roles in all of their productions.

In oratorio repertoire, Ms. MacRae also shows her versatility- from Monteverdi’s Vespers to Haydn’s Creation to Orff’s Carmina Burana. With the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, Ms. MacRae has twice appeared as the guest soloist on its tours of Western Canada. Together with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra she performed in the memorial concert for Canada’s beloved Otto Lowy, a broadcast legend on CBC Radio. In contemporary offerings, Phoebe has premiered works with orchestra by Canadians Michael Oesterle, Jocelyn Morlock and Bradshaw Pack.

As soloist, Ms. MacRae has performed under the batons of Julius Rudel, Jeanne Lamon, Owen Underhill, Georg Tintner, Timothy Vernon, Steven Stubbs, Simon Preston, Bruce Pullan, Charles Barber, Leslie Dala, Leslie Uyeda, James Fankhauser, Simon Carrington, Laurent Phillippe, Marc Destrubé, Giorgio Magnanensi and Bramwell Tovey. She has appeared with such companies and organisations as Vancouver Opera, Pacific Opera Victoria, Modern Baroque Opera, City Opera Vancouver, Pacific Baroque Orchestra, Vancouver New Music, Turning Point Ensemble, Vancouver Cantata Singers, Vancouver Bach Choir, Festival Vancouver and the Symphonies of Nova Scotia, Victoria and Vancouver. Ms. MacRae has shared the chamber music/recital stage with Rena Sharon, Margo Garrett, Colin Tilney, Erika Switzer, Laura Loewen, Tyler Duncan, Marc Destrubé, Alexander Dunn and renowned children’s performer Rick Scott. She has performed for the Regina Musical Society, Winnipeg’s Virtuosi Concerts, Vancouver International Song Institute, Victoria Summer Music Festival, Vancouver Early Music, and on recital tours throughout BC.

Ms. MacRae is a founding core faculty member of the Vancouver International Song Institute, a yearly summer festival and program designed for young singers and collaborative pianists; she teaches and performs there.

Phoebe MacRae holds a Masterclasses and Lectures of Music from the University of British Columbia and received further training at Queen of Puddings’ Artist Training Program in Toronto, at the Aspen Opera Theater Center, the Vancouver Early Music Programme, and the Banff Centre for the Performing Arts.

Ms. MacRae currently lives in Berkeley, California with her husband and two children.

ASL 2013: Pianist, Rachel Iwaasa

Hailed in the press as a "keyboard virtuoso" (Georgia Straight) with the “emotional intensity” to take a piece “from notes on a page to a stunning work of art” (Victoria Times Colonist), pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa has performed as soloist and chamber musician in Canada, the United States and Germany. Known for bold and innovative concerts, Rachel combines her warmth and curiosity to touch the hearts and minds of audiences, whether she is playing Beethoven and Schumann or Ligeti and Saariaho.

Rachel has appeared for Vancouver New Music, CONTACT contemporary music (Toronto), New Works Calgary, Groundswell New Music (Winnipeg), the Victoria Symphony, the Aventa Ensemble (Victoria), Music on Main, Redshift, the Western Front, the Little Chamber Music Series That Could, Vancouver Pro Musica and has been broadcast on CBC Radio. Rachel has a shameless passion for contemporary music, and has performed numerous premières, including pieces written especially for her by Rodney Sharman, Jeffrey Ryan, Jocelyn Morlock, Emily Doolittle, Alexander Pechenyuk, and many other Canadian composers. Most recently, Rachel presented Cosmophony, a solo piano recital of music inspired by the cosmos at the HR MacMillan Space Centre in Vancouver, accompanied by overhead panoramic projections of images of the planets and stars. This site-specific concert, which featured the premieres of no less than nine commissioned works by Canadian composers, was subsequently praised by the Vancouver Sun as a “brilliant” and “unforgettable” event. A CD recording of Cosmophonywill be released on the Redshift label in the Spring of 2010. Other highlights of the 09-10 season include performances of Cosmophony for Music TORONTO and Cornish College in Seattle, and the premiere of a commissioned solo piano piece by Marci Rabe for Vancouver New Music.

Rachel performs regularly with Mark McGregor as the flute and piano duo Tiresias.Theirdebut CD, Delicate Fires, was nominated for a 2008 Western Canadian Music Award in the category of Outstanding Classical Recording. Delicate Fires was produced with the generous assistance of the Barbara Pentland fund, and features the first commercially released recordings of her Sonata Fantasy for solo piano and Trance for flute and piano. It also presents the premiere recordings of works commissioned byTiresias from Canadian composers Rodney Sharman, Jennifer Butler, and Jocelyn Morlock. Later in 2009, Tiresias will release a second all-Canadian CD, Trade Winds, similarly pairing the music of established composer Jean Coulthard with lesser-known and emerging composers Paul Douglas and Christopher Kovarik.

Rachel’s major teachers include Jane Coop, Menahem Pressler, and Robin Wood. She holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of British Columbia, a Master of Music from Indiana University, and a Bachelor of Music from the University of Victoria, where she earned the Victoria Medal as the top graduating student in Fine Arts. She was also a two-time recipient of the prestigious Annual Grant from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) for graduate studies at the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler" Berlin. Other awards include grants from the Canada Council, the BC Arts Council, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Alberta Heritage Foundation. Rachel is currently on the faculty at UBC, the Richmond Music School and the Salina Cheng Music Academy. She is also currently editing new scholarly editions of Jean Coulthard’s late solo piano works for Avondale Press.

ASL 2012: Soprano, Phoebe MacRae

ASL 2012: Mezzo-Soprano, Lynne McMurtry

Described as “a force of nature” (Toronto Star) and “an actress of immense talent” (Opera Canada), mezzo-soprano Lynne McMurtry has performed across Canada and the U.S. Recent performances include her debut with Calgary Opera as Marthe in Faust, her debut with the Aldeburgh Connection recital series in Toronto, the Old Lady in Candide with Manitoba Opera, and a return to the Winnipeg Symphony for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Other highlights include Mistress Quickly in Falstaff with Edmonton Opera, the title role in Tamerlano with Opera in Concert, Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass with the Edmonton Symphony, and a solo recital at the State University of New York College at Fredonia with pianist Alison d’Amato.

Lynne’s rich, generous instrument and keen musical intelligence have brought her acclaim in a wealth of repertoire, such as Handel’s Messiah with both the Charleston Symphony Orchestra and the Kitchener Waterloo Philharmonic Chorus, Raminsh’s Magnificat with Chorus Niagara, and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with the Eastman Faculty Players. Other credits include appearances with the Boston Symphony (the Slave in Salome), Opera Ontario (Gertrude in Romeo et Juliette), and the Winnipeg Symphony (Mahler’s Rückert Lieder).

Lynne is an active recitalist and has sung at many distinguished song venues, including Tanglewood, Ravinia, and the Vancouver International Song Institute. Her recital with pianist Alison d’Amato exploring settings of the poetry of Walt Whitman earned her a rave review in the Toronto Star, which stated that “Art doesn’t get any more moving than this.”

Her performances have been broadcast on CBC Radio, and her most recent recording for Naxos of Vivaldi sacred music with Aradia Ensemble received a four-star review in BBC Music Magazine. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Voice at the State University of New York College at Fredonia.

ASL 2012: Baritone, Michael Robert-Broder

Native to Vancouver, Michael Robert-Broder has established himself as one of Canada's most versatile young baritones. Equally at home with art song, oratorio, and opera, he has gained a reputation for engaging performances that perfectly join poet’s text with composer’s music, with the dramatic essence of a piece.

As a strong advocate of contemporary music, Michael has been invited to première a number of pieces in the past year. Among them was Cameron Wilson’s The Oratorio to end all Oratorios, the role of The Jester in George Austin’s The King Who Wouldn’t Sing, and a concert of excerpts from Timothy-Benton Rorak’s dramatic cantata based on the writings of W.B. Yeats, Crazy Jane. Michael has presented recitals of staged “non-dramatic” works, which have included scenes from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, using the art songs of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and Wolf. On the lyric stage, Robert-Broder has recently portrayed the roles of l’hotelier, and un marchant d’elixir in Massenet’s Manon, Sprecher in Mozart’s masterpiece Die Zauberflöte, Bob in Menotti's The Old Maid and the Thief, Ben in Menotti's The Telephone, and Il Conte in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro.

Michael’s principle training has been under the guidance of Bruce Pullan, and Gary Relyea. Upcoming engagements include Donizetti's Don Pasquale and L'elisir d'amore, Bach's Johannes-Passion, Brahms's German Requiem, Schubert's Schwanengesang and Die Schöne Müllerin, Handel’s Athalia and several recitals of German, French and American Cabaret music.

ASL 2012: Pianist, Corey Hamm

ASL 2012: Pianist, Rachel Iwaasa

ASL 2012: Guest Poet, Betsy Warland

Betsy Warland trained as a painter, is the author of 11 books, and would be a composer if she were not a writer. A distinguishing feature of her writing is the un-inscribes space on the page as a resonating field of pacing and meaning; of the inferred, the not-said.

A number of Warland suite of poems have been the textual source for song cycles composed by Elizabeth Raum and Lloyd Burritt. Raum’s CD featuring one of these collaborative cycles won the Western Music Award in 2007. Burritt’s collaborative cycle, Yellow the Sweet Ache was premiered at VISI in 2010. Warland has also written an operatic play based on Vivaldi’s operas and papal ban. Her well-received 2010 book, Breathing the Page – Reading the Act of Writing, is a collection of twenty-four essays on the forces that lie beneath the language of craft.

ASL 2012: Guest Composer, Imant Raminsh

Born in Latvia, composer Imant Raminsh came to Canada in 1948. After completing his ARCT diploma in violin at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto and a Bachelor of Music at the University of Toronto, he spent two years at the “Akademie Mozarteum” in Salzburg, studying composition, violin, and conducting. Imant is the founding conductor of the Prince George Symphony, the Youth Symphony of the Okanagan, NOVA Children’s Choir, and the AURA Chamber Choir.

His compositions are widely performed throughout the world, in venues including Carnegie Hall (New York), Tchaikovsky Hall (Moscow), the Orpheum (Vancouver), Notre Dame de Paris, Canterbury Cathedral, and Santa Marie del Fiore. Imant had his conducting debut at Carnegie Hall in 2006 in performance of hisMagnificat and Missa Brevis with a massed choir and orchestra.

In October 2006 Imant was presented with the “Distinguished Visiting Alumnus Medal” by Dean Gage Averill of the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto. He was made an officer of the Three Stars of the Republic of Latvia in 2007. His immense contribution to the arts in the Okanagan was recognized when he received the 2011 Okanagan Music Award.

ASL 2012: Guest Poet, Rachel Rose

LIFE I

There used to be a hospital called Grace here in Vancouver, in which I was lucky enough to be born. My parents, with others equally idealistic, moved to Hornby Island then, and built a home in a place where I could run wild. Both worked with their hands, my father as a boat builder and my mother as a doctor. When their relationship ended, I moved in with my mother and visited my father, following her as she moved to Vancouver with my stepfather. I lived on a street called Princess, in Chinatown, and thought I had arrived. And then we left, to Anacortes, Washington. My Anacortes grew me, town of churches and horses and fishermen, town of lost girls.

When I got thoroughly lost, we moved to Seattle and I finally got a chance to sink my teeth into books, to find the friends I still count as my dearest. Canadian? American? I cast my vote when I went to Montreal to study. Brick oven bagels and blood-dripping lambs. A new language. Winter for half the year and a summer that blazed and sweated. A woman I loved who spoke three languages and wore a fine gold chain around her throat. A mountain that was really a hill with an angel on it. Beautiful women and wise professors and all those nights of slick confusion as I found my way and got lost again. Washed up in Japan, adrift, I submitted to Judo, to being alone with no company but my dog, to being an adult, learned to love persimmons, jellyfish, bewilderment. Coming home to the woman in Montreal and learning to live in her language, make a home with her. The world cracked open: a son, slim volume of poems. Back to Vancouver with my lover, our child. A garden, a daughter, another collection of poetry. No, we’re not married, and yes, she is the love of my life, and I know I’ve been lucky. A second baby son now, hauled around laughing by the older two, the dog sleeping out her twilight years on the front porch, and another manuscript about to be born.

LIFE II

Born in Vancouver, Canada, Rachel Rose holds dual U.S. and Canadian citizenship. She grew up on Hornby Island, in Vancouver’s Chinatown on Princess Street, in Anacortes, WA, and Seattle, and has also lived in Montreal and Maebashi, Japan. Her work has appeared in various journals in both countries, including The Malahat Review, Verse, Arc, Black Warrior Review, Poetry and The Best American Poetry. Her first book, Giving My Body to Science, (McGill/Queen’s University Press) was a finalist for The Gerald Lampert Award, The Pat Lowther Award, and the Grand Prix du Livre de Montreal, and won the Quebec Writers’ Federation A.M. Klein Award. Her second book, Notes on Arrival and Departure, was published by McClelland & Stewart in 2005. She holds a BA in English from McGill University and a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Two essays appeared in anthologies about mothering in 2008, in Between Interruptions: 30 Women Tell the Truth About Motherhood, and in Double Lives. Other work has been anthologized in Uncharted Lines: Poems from the Journal of the American Medical Association, White Ink: Poems on Mothers and Motherhood, In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry, Rocksalt, Open Wide a Wilderness, and Letters to the World. Rachel is the poetry and lyric prose mentor at Simon Fraser University’s The Writers Studio.

ASL 2012: Guest Composer, Leslie Uyeda

Leslie Uyeda was born in Montreal, and is a composer, conductor and pianist. She is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre. Uyeda’s many songs and song cycles have been performed by Martha Guth, Erika Switzer, Robyn Driedger-Klassen, Terence Dawson, Wendy Nielsen, Rena Sharon, Kathryn Cernauskas, Ari Barnes, Heather Pawsey, and Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa. Her choral music has been commissioned and performed by musica intima, chor leoni, the Phoenix Chamber Choir, and the Elektra Women’s Choir. Premieres in 2011 have included new songs for soprano Heather Pawsey, and baritone Doug MacNaughton. She has also composed song cycles for mezzo-soprano Jean Stilwell, and baritone Brett Polegato. Uyeda’s instrumental music is heard throughout Canada and the U.S.

Leslie’s most beloved poet is Lorna Crozier (OC) whose remarkable poems she has worked with to produce The First Woman (sop/piano), The Sex Lives of Vegetables (sop/clarinet/piano), White Cat Blues (sop/piano), Plato’s Angel (baritone/piano), A Summer’s Singing (SATB), and One Willow Grows (sop/piano). To pay tribute to her Japanese-Canadian heritage, Leslie chose the exquisite, evocative poetry of Joy Kogawa (OC), to create Offerings (sop/piano), Stations of Angels (sop/flute), and Flower Arranger (baritone/guitar). This year she is composing When The Sun Comes Out – a chamber opera for three singers and piano, commissioned by the Queer Arts Festival for production in August of 2012. The librettist is the talented Vancouver poet Rachel Rose.

Leslie’s compositions are published by The Avondale Press and Classica Music.