News & Articles
Pianist Jane Coop leaving UBC faculty after 32 years
May 11, 2012
For more information:
The Georgia Straight
After 32 years as a full-time faculty member of the UBC School of Music, celebrated pianist Jane Coop is leaving the university to devote herself to performing full-time.
“All the way along, I’ve been keeping up two lives: a full-time academic teaching position and a full-time performing career,” Coop explained in a phone conversation from her Vancouver home. “It’s been full to say the least. And I just decided that the time has come for me to resume my life as a full-time concert pianist. I wanted to do it while I’m still energetic and able to do that.”
The New Face of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra
May 10, 2012
For more information:
The Georgia Straight
When he joined the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, principal oboist Roger Cole was a fresh-faced 22-year-old graduate of the Juilliard School, embarking on his career as a professional orchestra player. That was in 1976, and for the ensuing 35 years, Cole was one of many baby boomers in the VSO who weathered the ups and downs of the music biz, gaining a few grey hairs along the way.
Audiences attending a VSO concert 10 or even five years ago would hear music performed largely by—to put it politely—a “mature” crop of musicians. Then came the retirements: flutist Camille Churchfield, in 2005 after 29 years; timpanist Don Adams, in 2007 after 50 years; principal horn player Brian G’froerer, who left in 2008 after 34 years; and principal double bassist Kenneth Friedman, in 2009 after 36 years—to cite just a handful.
“There were a whole slew of us that came in between ’74 and ’77,” observes Cole in a phone conversation with the Straight. “A lot of players moved on, and I was one of the few that’s remained here [in the wind section].”
Enter Generation Y: violinists like 32-year-old Jennie Press, who joined in 2004, and 31-year-old concertmaster Dale Barltrop, who joined three years ago. More recent hires include 26-year-old piccoloist and assistant principal flutist Nadia Kyne, and 26-year-old second clarinetist Todd Cope, both fresh out of school.
Bravo!
May 7, 20112
For more information:
Vancouver Womens Musical Society
Three UBC Music Students were Bursary Winners at the 2012 Vancouver Women's Musical Society competition held recently.
1st place: Chia-Hui Clare Yuan, pianist
2nd place: Evanna Chiew, mezzo soprano
3rd place: Madeline Hildebrand, pianist
The winners receive cash awards, certificates and a solo concert in the 2012 - 2013 concert season. The concerts will be held at the Unitarian Church, 949 West 49th Avenue at Oak.
Adjudicators for the competition were Philippe Etter and Michael Conway Baker.
From opera to the Supreme Court
May 2, 2012
For more information:
UBC Reports
After graduating this May with her law degree, SOM Alum Emily MacKinnon (MA'08 Ethnomusicology) will begin a prestigious clerkship with Beverley McLachlin, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada
“One of my most memorable moments at UBC Law was the visits by various Supreme Court of Canada Justices,” said MacKinnon, who is also an accomplished opera singer. “It was from them that I learned about this clerkship opportunity.”
“They were unbelievably inspiring, and I was absolutely captivated by the behind-the-scenes process of coming to a decision on a case and then writing a judgment,” MacKinnon said. “From the moment I discovered it was possible, I wanted nothing more than to clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada.”
From performing arias to preparing court memorandums, MacKinnon’s path from opera to law might not be the most traditional, but for her it was a natural fit.
“I was craving a connection with the community and opera is a small part of the world” explained MacKinnon who obtained her masters in Ethnomusicology at UBC after completing her Bachelor’s in music at the University of Ottawa. “Ethnomusicology was a way for me to reach out and be involved with something that is making a difference. But even that has its restrictions. With law, you are actually out there in the community making change happen.”
MacKinnon’s thesis for her Ethnomusicology MA looks at the way music is used around the world to educate people about HIV and AIDS. She carried those interests into law school, receiving a fellowship from the law firm Borden Ladner Gervais to research the criminalization of HIV nondisclosure.
Bravo! Kevin Zakresky
May 1, 2012
The Prince George Symphony Orchestra has just announced that UBC Music alumnus Kevin Zakresky (BMus 2004, MMus 2006) will be their new Music Director.
Earlier this year Kevin Zakresky completed his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in conducting at prestigious Yale University, graduating at the top of his class and winning the Aidan Cavanagh Award.
A Brazen symphony debut
April 26, 2012
For more information:
Times Colonist
On Monday, Schubert's "Unfinished" will open the final concert of the Victoria Symphony's Legacy Series, under the baton of guest conductor Bernhard Gueller, music director of Symphony Nova Scotia in Halifax.
The concert will also include Dvorák's Seventh Symphony, and Brazen, a new concerto for alto saxophone by Jeffrey Ryan, with Julia Nolan making her Victoria Symphony debut as the featured soloist.
Ryan and Nolan both live in Vancouver and the concerto was conceived while they chatted over coffee in 2009. Nolan had just heard orchestral music by Ryan played by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (which recently recorded some of it for the Naxos label's Canadian Classics series).
Impressed, she suggested that Ryan compose something for saxophone, which, it turned out, he had played in high school but had never written for. An official commission, supported by the B.C. Arts Council, followed. (Brazen is one of many works - including other concertos - Nolan has commissioned from Canadian composers.)
Running about 18 minutes and accompanied by strings and percussion, the concerto was prompted, Ryan says, by the double sense of the word "brazen," which means "made of brass" as well as "bold and shameless."
In exploring the latter sense of the word musically, he was inspired by the ambitious title character of the film All About Eve, personifying the many facets of her personality - "brash and defiant, sexy and seductive, calculating and manipulative" - through the solo saxophone.
"I love this piece!" says Nolan, who finds the music "cheeky and flirtatious, silky and melancholy," full of "humour and pathos" and what she calls "a wow factor."
Brava Madeline Hildebrand!
April 23, 2012
Madeline HIldebrand won First Place in the Women's Musical Club of Winnipeg McLellan Competition for Solo Performance with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.
In a surprise ending to the competition, the adjudicators declared two first place winners: Pianist Madeline Hildebrand (pianist in the UBC School of Music MMus program) and soprano Jessica Strong. Each receives $8,000 in prize money. Madeline and Jessica performed as soloists with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra at the final competition concert on Friday April 20th. The competition is open to advanced young Manitoba musicians, vocal and instrumental, who are pursuing performance careers. www.womensmusicalclubofwpg.ca
Ben Heppner sings at benefit event for VISI
April 21, 2012
For more information:
Vancouver Sun
EASY AIDA: Operatic sopranos receive bouquets after performing. Not so Dawson Creek-raised tenor Ben Heppner, who sang Tchaikovsky, Sibelius
and Grieg works at the Sheraton Wall Centre Hotel on Thursday. The $1,000-a-ticket do benefited the Vancouver International Song Institute, whose artistic director, Rena Sharon, accompanied Heppner on a Fazioli concert grand piano. But host Peter Wall had a special benefit for the singer. It was a 2012 Harley-Davidson Switchback motorcycle that rumbled up as he ended his second encore. Astonishing attendees as he had at La Scala Milan recently, Heppner accompanied himself singing I Don't Want To Rock 'n' Roll No More. That supported UBC School of Music professor Richard Kurth's contention that "song is the concentrated essence of our human character."
Brava Leah Field!
April 19, 2012
On April 2, 2012, The Faculty Arts announced the Killam Graduate Teaching Assistant Awards for the 2011/2012 academic year.
The recipients are:
Leah Field, School of Music
Samuel T. Reed, Department of Political Science
Gillian Sandstrom, Department of Psychology
The prize includes a certificate and $1,000.
Congratulations to the recipients of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal!
April 19, 2012
For more information:
The Governor General of Canada
Members of the Order of Canada living in Vancouver were awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in a presentation ceremony held in Vancouver on April 11, 2012. Among the recipients were serveral UBC Music affiliated musicians: Professors Emeriti Andrew Dawes and Bruce Pullan, UBC Music alumna Judith Forst, and UBC Honorary Degree recipients Diane Loomer, Dal Richards and Irving Guttman. The Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal was created to mark the 60th anniversary of Her Majesty's accession to the Throne. In addition to honouring the Queen for her service to the country, the medal also recognizes contributions and achievements made by Canadians. In total, 60,000 Canadians are being honoured with this medal in ceremonies across the country. Therefore there are many other UBC Music affiliated honourees. Congratulations to all!
19th-century poetry inspires Love in Public
April 18, 2012
For more information:
Vancouver Sun
Cast member Robyn Driedger-Klassen explains: "David wanted opera singers to sing it, but not in an operatic style - it requires well-trained voices to get some of the sounds he wants." Text is all EBB, but text is by no means everything. "The words say something but we mean some-thing different, sometimes something completely opposite. There is no scenario, just the EBB texts. No action is written down in the score, but David is totally involved in the dramatic action that we have developed."
The music is eminently approachable. "It's very melodic; it's very easy to listen to, not your typical modern music concert, more like music theatre, with touches of gospel and blues." Yet themes of new love, age disparity, and relationships breaking down are all as contemporary as last week. Modern dress heightens the effects and, according to Driedger-Klassen, even though the lyrics date from 1850, "The text is amazingly true to modern life. It's as if she wrote the first blog."
UBC grad turned Granville busker launches solo project
April 05, 2012
For More Information:
The Ubyssey
Thomas Beckman is out of breath when I spot him on the corner of Georgia and Granville in a full black suit. It’s a beautiful sunny afternoon and he’s just darted across town from a gig with Sons of Granville.
The band, which he formed in 2010, has become a Vancouver must-see. In the last 2 years alone they’ve managed to sell over 2000 CDs simply by busking around the city. But now, Beckman is ready to step out on his own with a solo viola album titled Conception Bay.
Congratulations to 3rd year composition student Roydon Tse
April 2, 2012
Roydon's work Force Studies for violin and cello was selected as the winner of the Land's End Chamber Ensemble's 12th Annual Emerging Composers Competition. The competition is for emerging composers. The final round of the competition was a workshop of works by the three finalists. The the prize includes $500 plus a premiere of Force Studies by the Land's End Ensemble at the University of Calgary's Rozsa Centre on the 28th of April, 2012. The work will be programmed as part of a Murray Schaffer series concert.
Student String Quartet from the UBC School of Music won 1st Prize in the Senior Category of the 2012 Young Musicians Chamber Music Competition
March 22, 2012
A student string quartet from the UBC School of Music won First Prize in the Senior Category of the 2012 Young Musicians Chamber Music Competition presented by the Friends of Chamber Music on March 4, 2012. Congratulations to: Anita Lee, violin; Katie Ho, violin;Catherine Chen, viola and Judy Lou who performed a movement from Ravel's String Quartet in F major.
The UBC quartet shares first prize with a string sextet as selected by adjudicators George Zukerman and Bryan King. The sexted performed a movement from Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence. A total of $5,000 in prizes were awarded to winning groups in junior and senior categories of the competition.
Book Warehouse to close after 32 years
March 16, 2012
For More Information:
Vancouver Sun
Sharman King (BMus’70) has been in the news regarding the closing of Book Warehouse after 32 years.
Book Warehouse, one of Metro Vancouver's largest independent discount book retailers, is closing its four stores.
The decision is being called another blow to B.C.'s independent book store industry, which is facing sharp competition from larger book retailers, Amazon, and digital ebook sales.
Week in Ideas: Christopher Shea
March 16, 2012
For More Information:
The Wall Street Journal
The deaf and people who have lost their voices may someday have a new way to speak, thanks to the Digital Ventriloquist Actor, or DiVA.
Developed at the University of British Columbia, the speech-production system makes use of high-tech gloves equipped with sensors and tracked in three-dimensional space. The person operating it creates vowel sounds by opening the right hand (different gestures determine the pitch and tonality) and "soft" consonants like r's and z's by closing that hand. Hard consonants are partly created by tapping the left-hand fingers.
It takes about 100 hours of training to learn to speak intelligibly using DiVA, say its creators, who showed it off at the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The technology has intrigued avant-garde musicians, who are drawn to its not-quite-human sound.
Jared Miller Takes Manhattan
March 16, 2012
For more information:
Trek Magazine Online
This spring Miller completes his Master of Music degree at Juilliard. His composition Souvenirs d’Europe was premiered by Canadian pianist Ang Li a few months ago at Carnegie Hall, and his piece for solo piano, Instincts, won him a 2011 SOCAN Young Composers Award. His new orchestral work, Cartoon Music: Three Movements for Orchestra, was premiered by the Juilliard Orchestra at their concert home in Lincoln Centre this February. “Conductor Jeffrey Milarsky was really enthusiastic, and the orchestra sounded wonderful,” says Miller.
Miller hails from Burnaby. Trained as a pianist, he began at UBC as a composition major studying with Dorothy Chang and Stephen Chatman. He also studied piano with Sarah Davis Buchner and Corey Hamm. By the time he graduated, Miller was on the radar of a number of important Vancouver music organizations. In 2008 he had a piece aired at the Vancouver Symphony’s Coulthard Readings, an important program named for long-time UBC luminary Jean Coulthard that provides a first chance for selected young composers to hear their orchestral thoughts performed live at the Orpheum. Miller’s piece led to a small VSO commission, 2010 Traffic Jam, which managed the neat trick of being a fine orchestral scherzo and becoming a popular favourite.
Bogdan Dulu selected for the Quarterfinal of the Seventh Honens International Piano Competition.
March 13, 2012
For more information:
Honens website
UBC DMA student Bogdan Dulu is one of fifty concert pianists from six continents chosen to perform in the Quarterfinals: International Audition Round of the Seventh Honens International Piano Competition. Quarterfinalists will perform a solo recital in Berlin, London, Los Angeles or New York in hopes of advancing to the next round and a chance of winning the largest prize in the world of music competitions - $100,000 CAD and a career development program valued at a half million dollars. On July 17, 2012 the Honens International Piano Competition will announce the 10 pianists who will advance to the semifinal round.
Sonic Boom shatters stereotypes
March 8, 2012
For more information:
Vancouver Sun
Recent Booms have featured a composer-in-residence. This year it's Simon Fraser's Owen Under-hill, long connected with Vancouver New Music and now co-artistic director of the Turning Point Ensemble. There's also an ensemble-in-residence, the Vancouver Brass Project, and a student com-position master class with trombonist Jeremy Berkman and pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa.
Every Boom includes the new and often unexpected: this year that is a pair of concerts at St. Philip's Anglican Church, which is a lovely space for music - big enough for a good sound, yet intimate enough to encourage experimentation and risk-taking. It has a good mid-century Casavant Freres organ, updated and tweaked in 2007, and is the home turf of guest artist Michael Murray.
UBC Opera Program Recognized with 2011-2012 Alfred Scow Award
March 6, 2012
This annual award is given to an undergraduate program or department that has had a significant positive impact on student life and student development at UBC. The Alfred Scow Award is one of several Student Development Awards presented by the Office of the Vice President Students each spring, and, in addition to student development, the award focuses on vision, integrity, and dedication to social justice. Thanks to contributions made by Iain Taylor (Project Director, UBC Botanical Gardens), Alan Macdonald (M.Mus Candidate), Julia Kot (B.MUS'11 & M.Mus Candidate), and Evanna Chiew (3rd year B.Mus), UBC Opera's application was met with success. All wrote detailed statements outlining their various experiences with the UBC Opera Program which was accompanied by an in-depth description of the program's advancement over the years written by Nancy Hermiston (Head of the Voice & Opera Divisions).
Canucks anthem singer credits drastic diet
February 24, 2012
For more information:
Vancouver Sun
Vancouver Canucks anthem singer Mark Donnelly (BMus'82) had tried almost every weight-loss plan in the book - Atkins, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig and even the grapefruit diet - before he hit upon the one that enabled him to drop 172 pounds over the last year and a half.
It sounds unorthodo cut your calories to 500 a day - about a fifth of the recommended daily intake for men - and inject yourself with the pregnancy hormone (human chorionic gonadotropin or HCG) to suppress your appetite.
Donnelly's doctor was skeptical about the plan, but the results were dramatic. Donnelly lost 45 pounds over the first month and his test results came back better than ever.
He did four more rounds of treatments, which last from three to six weeks.
During that time he injected himself with HCG and ate 100 grams of protein, usually lean chicken or seafood, two servings of fruit and one serving of vegetables twice a day. Treatments must be spaced out at increasing intervals: six weeks, then eight weeks, then 12.
Donnelly is now within 12 pounds of his target weight, and while he says he will work to lose the rest through exercise and responsible eating, he said it is unlikely he will take any more hormones.
New Technology Turns hand gestures into Music
February 20, 2012
For more information:
Live Science
Some people are said to talk with their hands. A professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of British Columbia decided to make it a literal statement.
Sidney Fels and his team equipped a set of gloves with position sensors that track were they are in three dimensions. Different gestures produce different kinds of sounds. For instance, a closed right hand creates consonants, and opening it creates vowels. Meanwhile the left hand controls the sounds that have "stops" in them -- a B or P (in American English).
CTV News - Top Picks: DIVA Device
February 21, 2012
For more information:
CTV News
CTV News reports on the DIVA device (DIVA short for digital ventriloquist actor) and interviews UBC researcher Johnty Wang.
Your Hands will Sing with Aural Gloves
February 21, 2012
For more information:
gizmodo
American Sign Language may soon be obsolete if these motion-sensing gloves come to market. For now, a UBC team are the only ones to enjoy harmonizing with their own themselves.
The gloves, designed by a team at the University of British Columbia led by Professor Sidney Fels, recognize their position in three-dimensional space and modulate an associated audible frequency. The right hand controls the basic sounds—an open hand creates vowels, closing it creates consonants while the pitch of the hand commands the pitch of the sound. The left hand controls "stops" for letters like B and P.
The team currently uses the device as a high-tech synthesizer allowing soloists to sing duet with themselves and have already put on multiple public performances with the help of electrical/computer engineering masters student and classical pianist, Johnty Wang. They also hope to adapt the system to control heavy machinery remotely. The worn device could also find use among the deaf, who could use it to communicate directly with the non-deaf using a series of hand gestures but without having to find an interpreter.
Video interview available here via YouTube
CBC Radio One - As it Happens (Tuesday Feb. 21 part III)
February 21, 2012
For more information:
CBC Radio One
CBC Radio One - on the program As It Happens - broadcast on Tuesday February 21 an Interview with Johnny Wang, grad student with Sid Fels and Bob Pritchard, talking about the DIVA projects with an excerpt from Pritchard's "What Does A Body Know?" performed by Marguerite Witvoet (starts at the 21 minute mark)
Congratulations to Matthew Emery
February 21, 2012
Second year composition student Matthew Emery's SATB choral work Come to Me is one of three winners in The Choral Project's 4th Annual Choral Composition Contest 2011-2012.
The Choir Project is a choir from San Jose. The choir will soon vote to decide 1st, 2nd and 3rd place and will perform each of the works in June 2012 as well as make a professional recording of the works. http://www.sjcp.org/
VSO's Tovey, singer Buffy Sainte-Marie to receive honorary degrees from UBC
February 15, 2012
For more information:
Vancouver Sun
Bramwell Tovey, music director of the Vancouver Sym-phony Orchestra, and singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie are among the 10 people who will receive honorary degrees this year from the University of B.C.
Others include former prime ministers Joe Clark and Paul Martin, forestry researcher Michael Wingfield, and Sophie Pierre, the longtime chief of St. Mary's Indian Band in Cranbrook.
In a release Tuesday, the university said the honorary degrees recognize substantial contributions to society at provincial, national or inter-national levels. Most of the degrees will be awarded during spring convocation (May 23-30) on the Vancouver cam-pus, but three - to Martin, Tovey and Wingfield - will be awarded in the fall.
UBC's Okanagan campus will award honorary degrees to retired senator Ross Fitzpatrick and filmmaker Deepa Mehta during a June 7 ceremony.
UBC's list of the 10 Vancouver recipients also includes:
. Dominic Barton, the global managing director at management consultancy McKinsey & Company;
. Philanthropist Robert Hung Ngai Ho;
. Ethnobotanists Memory Elvin-Lewis and Walter Lewis.
CMU board selects president
February 13, 2012
To read the full article:
www.mennoweekly.org
Cheryl Pauls has been appointed Canadian Mennonite University’s second president by the university’s board of governors.
Pauls, a faculty member, will assume her new duties Nov. 1. She follows President Gerald Gerbrandt, who will retire June 30.
She is a graduate of one of CMU’s predecessor colleges, Mennonite Brethren Bible College, and holds a doctor of musical arts degree from the University of British Columbia.
Concert Salutes Life of Wallace Leung (BMus 1992)
February 9, 2012
For more information:
Vancouver Sun
The last few have been heady months of change at the Vancouver Academy of Music.
The Vanier Park music centre has a new director, cellist Joseph Elworthy, and a relatively new conductor of the Academy Orchestra, Leslie Dala.
Dala is one of those Vancouver treasures who wears a number of hats: former music director of the Prince George Symphony, now music director of the Bach Choir and associate conductor and chorus director at Vancouver Opera.
At the VAM, Dala is in charge of an ensemble of advanced students, a group that performs on a regular basis throughout the year. Their concert Feb. 19 at the Orpheum is an emotion-ally charged proposition, with music by Beethoven, Brahms, and Edmonton-based John Estacio. It's a commemorative concert celebrating the far, far too short life of Wallace Leung [BMus 1992], the Vancouver conductor who died in New York from viral encephalitis 10 years ago, and who was Dala's predecessor at the Prince George Symphony.
Canada has contributed more than its fair share to the world of contemporary conducting. Those who knew Leung felt it was only a matter of time and a few good breaks before he went from the national to the international stage. He was one of the shining stars of his generation; how timely and how appropriate that the VAM is mounting this musical memorial.
Harpist send instruments to Africa
February 6, 2012
To read the full article:
Vancouver Sun
As you read this, there’s a ship bound for Africa with 126 musical instruments on board.
They’re all from Greater Vancouver save for one, a double bass, that was trucked here from Toronto.
There are violins, guitars, drums, clarinets, trumpets, trombones, cellos, a euphonium, recorders, tubas, that double bass and three pianos, including an old, elegant, and lovingly restored upright that once adorned the hallway of a 100-plus-year-old house on Kits Point.
The ship left Vancouver on Boxing Day for Italy, Oman and ultimately Tanzania, where the instruments will be unloaded and trucked to their final destination, the Ngomo Dolce Music Academy in Lusaka, Zambia and the 100 or so students who study there.
At least if everything goes according to plan, they will. It is Africa, after all, and as Heidi Krutzen, the Vancouver harpist who organized the expedition knows, things don’t always run smoothly.
Nevertheless, she hopes they’ll arrive in March. And she intends to be there when they do — she left Vancouver Sunday, headed for Zambia by way of Scotland. “I get a lot out of this. I love seeing the smiles on the children’s faces and knowing I’ve made a difference to them. And I learn a lot whenever I’m there.”
Remembering Rudolf Firkusny
February 2012
To read the full article:
Julliard website
UBC faculty member, Sara Davis Buechner writes an article for Juilliard. View the article here.
Clarinet Corner Show 5
Clarinetist and UBC School of Music faculty member, Gene Ramsbottom is featured and interviewed for the radio program Clarinet Corner on National Public Radio out of Troy, Alabama. Broadcast was January 29, 2012
Of the three recorded tracks the show featured, the host Dr. Tim Phillips, used Stephen Chatman's "Prairie Dawn Concerto" from the Proud Music of the Storm c.d.
Click here to listen
Chor Leoni rediscovers a master
February 1, 2012
For more information:
Vancouver Sun
Who was Luigi Cherubini, and why does Chor Leoni Men’s Choir assistant conductor Kevin Zakresky think Vancouver should know about him?
Read the article (link above) for more information!
Matthew Emery - Untitled (Usessions)
February 1, 2012
For more information:
Ubyssey
2nd year music student, Matthew Emery, sits down and talks to Ubyssey for an interview and does a video. Click the link above for more details.
Congratulations to 2012 UBC Concerto Competition Winners
Congratulations to the winners and finalists of the 2012 UBC Concerto Competition.
1st place Jeremy Lawi, percussion. Jennifer Higdon Percussion Concerto
2nd place Natalie Lo, piano. Frédéric Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1
3rd place Hillary Young, alto. Samuel Barber Knoxville Summer of 1915, Op. 24
A special thank you to the three members of the adjudicating panel:
Keiko Alexander, pianist and teacher
Joseph Elworthy, cellist and Executive Director, Vancouver Academy of Music
Matthew Baird, bassoonist and CBC producer of Saturday Afternoon at the Opera and Sunday’s In Concert program.
The Competition was held Saturday January 28, 2012 in the Roy Barnett Recital Hall in the Music Building.
Bridging the musical gap
January 26, 2012
For more information:
Vancouver Sun
Brenda Fedoruk is not only one of Vancouver's most in-demand flute players and teachers, she is also a com-mitted member of the Turning Point Ensemble. In this week-end's Colourful World, she and her fellow musicians form a living bridge between the new music of today and classic repertoire of the last century.
Aloha International Piano Competition
January 25, 2012
For more information:
Hawaiian skies
The ukulele isn’t the only instrument that’s big in Hawai‘i. Each year, top pianists from around the world make their way to the Islands for a week of music in paradise. The occasion? The Aloha International Piano Festival. Acclaimed pianists teach master classes, a spirited piano competition enthralls the music-loving crowd and a concert series showcases incredible talent.
Sara Buechner featured in the video promotion which can be seen here.
The Soundtrack of Life
January 2012
For more information:
Trek Online
Interview with Tyler Kinnear, a PhD student in Musicology at UBC asking are we turning a deaf ear to the information embedded in our acoustic environment?
The Power of the Opera
January 2012
For more information click here
Watch YouTube video interview
From heroes and villains to laughter and heartache, opera offers timeless tales. For soprano Simone Osborne (DMPS ‘09), the universal stories that connect artists and audiences motivate her to perform, night after night.
Supported by the late patron of the performing arts, David Spencer, and founded on the belief that experience is crucial to success, the UBC Opera program offers students invaluable experiences: to perform in three productions every season; to sing in a variety of community engagements; and to tour in Europe, China and Canada during the summer.Beyond willingness to explore an increasingly neglected byway of the repertoire, the best single reason for this particular revival is as a showcase for Canadian soprano Simone Osborne, making her Vancouver Opera Debut in the role of Juliette. Osborne’s career was launched in 2008 with a resounding success at the Metropolitan Opera auditions; in recent seasons she’s been heard in roles with Toronto’s Canadian Opera Company.
For a young singer in the early dawn of her career, the role of Juliette might almost seem to be typecasting; Osborne’s boisterous girlishness in Act One seems appropriate and natural. But vocally, Juliette is anything but an ingenue. The composer demands a soprano with both agility, good top notes, and considerable dramatic range. Osborne acquits herself admirably, achieving her personal best in her grand Act Four soliloquy.
