Composer Biographies
Clinton Ackerman
Clinton Ackerman (b. 1989) began studying classical and jazz piano in the rural community of Watrous, Saskatchewan. To further his musical education he moved to Vancouver in 2009 to study music composition at SFU. Since starting there he has had a number of pieces selected for the “SFU Student Composers in Concert,” recital held at the end of each semester. He has composed pieces for choir, string trio, and various chamber ensembles.
Alfredo Santa Ana
Since arriving in Vancouver, Alfredo Santa Ana has written a variety of music for which he has been both a nominee and recipient of a number of awards and commissions. In 2008 he was one of the winners of the Canadian University Music Society composition competition at UBC for his “Eleven Dialogues” for violin and cello. his film music has also been awarded Romania’s NexT Award for Best Film Score for his work on the musical Patterns 3, and in 2007 was nominated for a BC Leo Award. His chamber music has also been performed by a number of Vancouver’s new music ensembles including Standing Wave and the Turning Point Ensemble. He is currently a DMA candidate at UBC where he is slowly crafting his final dissertation composition.
Mark Armanini
Mark Armanini, a native Vancouverite, studied composition with Elliot Weisgarber and piano with Robert Rodgers at UBC, graduating with an MMus in 1984. In 1990 he began composing for various combinations of Oriental and Western instruments, a crowning achievement being four concerti recorded with the Latvian National Symphony with Vivian Xia, Heidi Krutzen, and the Khac Chi Ensemble as soloists under the direction of John Zoltek. The CD has been released as Rain in the Forest on the Centredisc label. In 2000 he traveled to Taipei, in 2003 to Beijing and Shanghai as part of composer exchanges, in 2006 to the Nanjing Jazz Festival, and in 2007 to Wuhan to study the Marquis Yi Bell Set, with performances and meetings in each city. In 2009 and 2010, he attended the Atlas Academy, a two-week intercultural orchestra intensive in Amsterdam. With an extensive catalogue of over 60 works, he is building on his Vancouver roots. Many of his works celebrate his musical association with intercultural ensembles such as the Orchid Ensemble; he composed “Heartland”, the title track of their first CD. He is presently the acting Artistic Director of the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra and Project Coordinator for the BC Chinese Music Ensemble. www.armanini.ca
John L. Baker
John L. Baker studied math and computers at university and graduate school in the 1950s and ’60s, music theory and composition in the 1990s as a non-degree student at Washington State University. Technically, most of his music of the past few years takes up a self-imposed challenge: to achieve the directional sense of tonal harmonic progressions by entirely different means. He does this by consistent quasi-functional use of partitions of the twelve tones of the equal-tempered scale into tetrachords with internal pitch symmetry. For details and examples, see www.polytrope.ca.
Adam Basanta
Adam Basanta is completing a BFA in music composition at SFU, studying electroacoustic composition with Barry Truax and acoustic composition with David MacIntyre. In his compositions, He tries to preserve a connection with real-world phenomena while engaging in medium-specific techniques. He is particularly interested in semiotic frameworks for composition, ecological modeling, binaural phonography, and found-sound environments. He has collaborated with choreographers Henry Daniel, Troika Ranch (NY/Berlin), and Kinesis Dance (Vancouver). His compositions have been performed at concerts and festivals throughout North Amnerica and the United Kingdom and have received national awards. www.myspace.com/adambasanta
Tyler Belding
Tyler Belding was born in Quesnel, British Columbia, and has been playing guitar for nine years and actively composing for the last two years. He is currently taking classes at the University of British Columbia earning a Bachelor of Music degree and studying guitar with Michael Strutt. Tyler began his music education at Douglas College where he was awarded a scholarship for excellence in performance and academics, and achievement award, and was also a semi-finalist at the 2008 Northwest Guitar Festival in Seattle, Washington. While at Douglas College he studied composition with Doug Smith and has been composing independently since.
Jonathan Bernard
Jonathan combines his background in Western percussion with a fascination for Asian traditions to create a unique sound palette, incorporating a myriad of instruments, techniques and styles. Jonathan's interests span genres from orchestral music to New Music, and World Music. Having premiered over 70 chamber works, Jonathan performs with the Orchid Ensemble, Tandava, Vancouver New Music, Fringe Percussion, orchestras including the Vancouver, Victoria, and CBC Radio Orchestra, and is principal percussionist with the Vancouver Island Symphony. Jonathan's interest in world music has led him to perform Chinese, Javanese, Balinese and Korean music and study traditional and contemporary Chinese percussion in Beijing, China; Arabic percussion in Cairo, Egypt; and Carnatic rhythm in South India with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council. Jonathan has toured throughout North America, Europe, and Japan.
Keon Birney
Keon Birney received his musical training at the University of Calgary, where he studied composition with Allan Gordon Bell, David Eagle, and William Jordan. His music has been performed by the Calgary Philharmonic, Turning Point Ensemble, Foothills Brass Quintet, Northern Lights Brass Quintet, Altius Brass, Alberta Winds, and a variety of amateur music ensembles. His music has also been performed during Vancouver Pro Musica’s Sonic Boom and Further East/Further West festivals and during the 2008 International Trumpet Guild Music Festival. He currently lives and works as a freelance musician in the city of North Vancouver.
Taylor Brook
Taylor Brook is a Canadian composer who has studied with Denys Bouliane, Luc Brewaeys, Brian Cherney, Sean Ferguson, John Rea, and Ana Sokolovic. In 2008 he spent two months in Kolkata, India, with Hindustani musician Debashish Bhattacharya, studying raga in the North Indian tradition on the chaturangui (slide guitar). Hismusic focuses on just-intonation tunings and is oftenmicrotonal to a high degree. His music has been performed in North America and Italy by the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Quatuor Bozzini, Orchestre de la Francophonie Canadienne, Danielle Cumming, and Mira Benjamin. He participated in the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne FORUM 2010, composing a newwork for theNathalie Bujold film Les trains où vont les choses; the piece was awarded the Prix Public and overall second prize. Taylor is currently living in Brussels, studying composition with Luc Brewaeys.
Annette Brosin
German composer Annette Brosin has studied composition with Chaya Czernowin at the Music University in Vienna, and is currently completing the second year of her PhD program at UVic with Dr. Dániel Péter Biró. Her main compositional interest lies in investigating social-political aspects and interactive processes, whether these are to be discovered in her musical material, or in the reciprocal encounter between musicians and audience. Her works have been played in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Canada.
Jennifer Butler
Jennifer Butler has been fortunate to work with many Canadian ensembles, such as the Vancouver Symphony, Standing Wave, Tiresias, the Turning Point Ensemble, Arraymusic, the Vertical Orchestra, and Continuum Contemporary Music. In February her new work Silent Spring was premiered by the Victoria Symphony. One of her major artistic influences is her continued participation in R. Murray Schafer’s annual project And Wolf Shall Inherit the Moon, which takes place in the wilderness of the Haliburton Forest. In 2009 Jennifer completed her Doctorate, but this accomplishment was quickly overshadowed by the arrival of her daughter Olivia just a few weeks later. Now her life is full of endless lullabies and improvising with plastic instruments.
Jeff Caron
Born in Calgary, and after spending almost two decades between the Okanagan, Kootenays and Victoria, Jeff Caron settled in Vancouver in 1996. A multi-instrumentalist, he has performed and recorded playing electric bass, mandola, and percussion with rock musicians in various semi-pro ensembles since 1992. Ever eager to broaden his musical horizons, he began studying classical guitar with Stephen Boswell in 2004 at Capilano College. Then in 2006 he continued guitar studies at UBC with Michael Strutt. In his final year of guitar performance, he declared an additional major and began composition studies with Stephen Chatman and Dorothy Chang. For the 2008/09 season he continues full-time enrolment at the UBC School of Music exploring electroacoustic composition, conducting and counterpoint; his principal instructors are Jeffrey Ryan, Bruce Pullan and William Benjamin.
Cameron Catalano
Cameron Catalano dabbles in four corners of music: folk, electro-acoustics, pop, and contemporary composition. In 2010 he was kept busy with a multitude of musical projects. He co-produced four albums by local singer-songwriters at Gladgnome Studios, arranged an electro-acoustic documentary of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics commissioned by the Canada Council, and wrote songs for an amateur production of Alice in Wonderland. He also produced Heart Swells, an album of songs written over the course of two 90-minute collaboration sessions during the 2009 Arts Wells Festival. His current musical interest involves developing democratic musical forms that can be played with equal competency from virtuoso to beginner. The result is a meditative conversation in tones. It allows the player to think in terms of high/low, density, and dynamics to fluidly respond to others’ musical phrases. He is currently preparing an application for graduate study blending music, democracy, and dialogue.
Kil Mo Choi
Kil Mo Choi was born in 1981 in Korea. He studied composition with I-Jae Park in Seoul in 2000, then came to Vancouver where he met his next composition instructors Dr Jared Burrows and Peter Fraser Macdonald. After that, he entered Capilano College as a composition major, and studied composition with Mark Armanini. He transfered to UBC in 2004 where he studied with Dr Dorothy Chang. He graduated UBC with a major in music composition in 200 , and he is currently looking for a workplace where he can use what he has learned. He is interested in music co-worked with films, games, commercials, TV, and other media.
Teresa Marie Connors
Teresa Marie Connors is an active acoustic/electroacoustic composer, opera singer, and film composer. She collaborates with a multitude of artists from diverse backgrounds and sensibilities. Originally from the musically rich island of Newfoundland, Teresa studied both Composition and Opera singing at Dalhousie University in Nove Scotia as well as The Banff Centre for the Arts. She is a recent recipient of the Canada Council Arts grant for world music and received a Leo Award for her musical score of the short film Dog Boy. www.divatproductions.com
Andre Cormier
André Cormier’s work has been presented in Canada, the USA, Europe, and New Zealand. He has written for solo musicians, small and large chamber ensembles and orchestra, as well as for opera, dance and collaborative work with visual artists. His works have been commissioned and premiered by artists in Canada, the USA, and Europe. In 2008 he launched Éditions musique SISYPHE (emsis.ca) a music publishing house focusing on experimental music. In July 2009, with the help of the Canada Council, he undertook an intensive one-month composition study with Antoine Beuger in Düsseldorf, Germany. While in Düsseldorf, Begegnung, a concert programme entirely dedicated to some of his string works was presented by members of the Quatuor Bozzini as part of the Klangraum Series 2009 at the Düsseldorf Kunstraum.
Craig Day
Craig leads a double life as a composer and chef. He is actively involved with Vancouver Pro Musica and currently serves as Vice President of the Board of Directors. He has written for the Sonic Boom Festival, the Further East/Further West concert series, Music on Main, the UBC Composers’ Collective, and independently for local ensembles and performers.
In his culinary life, Craig works at a downtown café and is pursuing the final year of his Red Seal certification for cooking. In his limited spare time, Craig enjoys kickboxing and biking, and has recently taken up web design. www.myspace.com/craigdaycomposer
Moshe Denburg
Moshe Denburgh (b. 1949) grew up in Montreal, Canada, in a religious Jewish family. His musical career has spanned four decades and his accomplishments encompass a wide range of musical activities, including Composition, Performance, Jewish Music Education, and Piano Tuning. He has travelled worldwide, living and studying music in Canada, the USA, Israel, India, and Japan. From 1986-90 he studied composition with John Celona at the UVic, Canada. Since 1987 his compositions have reflected an ongoing commitment to the principle of inter-cultural music making—works that bring together the instruments and ideas of many cultures. He is the founding artistic director of the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra (VICO), a vehicle for the realization of his, and other Canadian composers’ inter-cultural work. He is also an associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre.
Sylvia DeTar
Syliva DeTar was born in Salt Lake City and moved to B.C. in 2003 to study music and environmental geography at SFU. She has composed primarly under the tuition of Owen Underhill and Barry Truax. She is currently an instructor and performer in the SFU Pipe Band Organization.
Nimus Dilasso
A disciple of Serge Garant and Gilles Tremblay, Nimus Dilasso is mostly self-taught. He has been writing music since the end of the sixties, and his music has been performed in Montreal, Bombay, and Tapei. He has also written music for theatre and film.
Krista Dragomer
Krista Dragomer completed her undergraduate studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She is currently pursuing a graduate degree in art history, visual art, and theory—focusing on sound art—at UBC, where she is involved with the Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre (MAGIC) and the Institute for Computing, Information, and Cognitive Science (ICICS). Her recent work in sound and video, made in collaboration with painter and video artist Rashin Fahandej, has been shown at the Washington Street Art Center in Boston, Organhaus Gallery in Chonqing, China, and the “Sound Objects and Film” conference at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.
Nicholas Fairbank
Nicholas Fairbank lives in Victoria, B.C., where he divides his time between composing, performing, conducting and teaching. After early keyboard studies in Vancouver he pursued further training in pipe organ performance and choral conducting in London, England and Paris, France. His composition teachers have included Stephen Chatman and John Celona, and he holds an M.Mus. in composition from the University of Victoria. Mr. Fairbank is currently on the faculty of the Victoria Conservatory of Music, conducts two community choirs, is a member of the College of Examiners of the Royal Conservatory of Music, and an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre. His catalogue of compositions includes works for voice, keyboard solo, and various choral and instrumental ensembles.
Kristy Farkas
Kristy Farkas is a Victoria-based composer and performer/improviser. She completed an MMus in composition at the University of Victoria after having received a BMus from Wilfrid Laurier University. She has studied with composers Christopher Butterfield, Gordon Mumma, Peter Hatch and Linda Catlin Smith. Her music has been performed in Canada and Japan and presented by Arraymusic, Continuum, Vancouver New Music, The Music Gallery, Open Space, Ensemble Symposium, and the Vancouver Chinese Music Ensemble. She is a founding member of the ensemble CURV, a trio dedicated to the composition and performance of new experimental works in alternative venues. Her music combines both electronic and acoustic elements with performances that often include film, theatre, dance, and painting. Her works strongly consider the concert space and “choreography” of the performers, as well as the performer-to-audience relationship. Her intuitive approach to music-making is highly focused on timbre and the intricacies of sound.
Arvin Fekri
Arvin Fekri was born in 1988 and immigrated to Canada in 1999. He enrolled as an undergraduate student at the University of British Columbia in 2006, majoring in music composition. He has studied with Giorgio Magnanensi, Dorothy Chang, and Keith Hamel, producing a variety of works ranging from more traditionally conceived to more experimental. He has been awarded the Robert A. Tipple, Maurice Taylor, and Pearl Schneider Chan Memorial Scholarships in Music.
Martin Fisk
Martin Fisk completed a B.Mus. degree at UBC, and studied with John Rudolph and Salvador Ferreras. Upon completion, he travelled to Indonesia to experience and to study Gamelan from its creators. Since that time, Martin has performed in a wide variety of musical settings, and works as both a performer and educator. His experience includes pit percussion in numerous musical theatre productions, performances with Vancouver New Music, Tum Balalaika, the Orchid Ensemble, Helikon Ensemble, and most recently at the Sonic Boom Festival.
Martin currently performs with Gamelan Gong Gita Asmara and Ensemble Symposium, as well as with the Vancouver Island, Kamloops, and Okanagan Symphony Orchestras. Martin maintains a studio of private students, is a faculty member of the UBC Summer Institute, and is the percussion coach and Assistant Director for the West Vancouver Youth Band.
Kristopher Fulton
Kristopher Fulton (b. 1978) has been living and composing in Vancouver all his life. Over the last few years his works have received acclaim by critics and audiences in Vancouver, Victoria, and Montréal as well as internationally in Ireland, Austria, and England. He has been most fortunate to have his works featured on many recordings, in Festival Vancouver, in the Vancouver International Dance Festival, and broadcast on CBC radio. Recently he has been elated to have his career advance in large strides with regular concerts, commissions, broadcasts, and publications. He hopes to complete a CD of his a cappella works in the near future.
Brian Garbet
Brian Garbet was born in Edmonton. He has a BFA in music composition from SFU and a diploma in jazz studies from Vancouver Community College, with a focus on guitar performance. He has composed acoustic and electroacoustic music for both film and theatre. His composition “Ritual” was a Jeu de Temps national prize winner. His work has been performed and aired internationally, most recently at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Having performed and recorded with the rock band Crop Circle for the past decade, and now home from living in Australia, he is looking forward to resuming his studies and completing his master’s degree.
Livia Gho
Born and raised in Singapore, Livia Gho has been very much acquainted with the sounds of both the Eastern and Western world. A classically trained pianist, she is also proficient in the Chinese zither (zheng) and the voice. Her formal training in composition began in 2007 under Dr. John Sharpley and has continued under Jeffrey Ryan, Dorothy Chang, and Terence Dawson. Other musical training came in the form of choral singing, accompanying, and conducting. She has toured and competed in several International Choral Festivals, such as the International Olomouc Choral Competition, Czech Republic, and the 13th Australian International Music Festival, Sydney. Her compositions have been featured in the Sonic Boom Festival 2009 and 2010 and the West Coast Composers’ Symposium 2010. She has just finished a piece under the Visual Voice Research Group (Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre) for Digital Ventriloquized Actors (DIVAs) and has also received commissions to write for Orchestras such as Ablaze. She is currently in her fourth undergraduate year in Composition at UBC, studying under Stephen Chatman.
Kara Gibbs
Kara Gibbs (b.1981) was born and raised in the Vancouver area. She graduated from UBC with a BMus in composition after study with both Keith Hamel and Brent Lee. She has received performances and readings from the UBC Contemporary Players, UBC Women’s Choir, Infinitus String Quartet, Elektra Women’s Choir, Phoenix Chamber Choir, the Penderecki String Quartet, and members of the Turning Point Ensemble. She has also participated in the Westcoast Composers Symposium, song room, and Sonic Boom Festivals. Kara works in publicity, marketing and administration for a number of arts organizations including Music on Main, Vancouver Pro Musica, The Vancouver Cantata Singers and the Canadian Music Centre.
Victoria Gibson
Victoria Gibson has worked as a singer/songwriter and electronic music sound designer/composer for 25 years. She has also worked actively as a recording engineer and computer specialist.
Ruth Guechtal
Ruth Guechtal is a composer, performer and instructor and composes for a variety of instrumentations such as accompanied and solo voice, string quartet, wind instruments and guitar. Her style is the result of her interests in the use of textures in music whether it is through acoustic or electronic instruments, melody or the use of noise. She has recently graduated from Wilfrid Laurier University where she studied alternately with Linda Catlin Smith, Peter Hatch and Glenn Buhr. She currently is residing in Victoria where she is completing a Master’s degree in composition at the University of Victoria and is studying with Dr. Biro. Recently she has written a choral piece for a Capella choir and a double string quartet named “Sparagmos”.
Iman Habibi
Iman Habibi, MMUS (UBC 2010), BMUS (UBC 2008), is an award-winning composer and pianist, hailed as a “giant in talent” (Penticton Herald). His music has been programmed by prestigious concert organizations such as the Marilyn Horne Foundation (New York), the Canadian Opera Company (Toronto), Tapestry New Opera (Toronto), the Atlantic Music Festival (Maine), the BCScene Festival (Ottawa), and the Powell Street Festival (Vancouver). He has received numerous awards including second prize at the 2008 Vancouver Bach Choir’s national Competition for Large Choir Works, and first prize at the 2009 Guelph Chamber Choir’s national competition. As a pianist, he was a finalist at the inaugural Knigge National Piano Competition. Iman is also well known for his collaborations with pianist Deborah Grimmett. The two pianists formed a duo in 2010, which at its debut, won third prize and the audience choice award at the International Northwest Piano Ensemble Competition.
Heather Harty
Heather Harty (b. 1976) enjoyed an idylic childhood on a large wheat farm in southern Alberta. She left her family home at the age of 16 to pursue piano studies with Colleen Athparia in Calgary. In 1994 she moved to Vancouver, where she completed both her B.Mus. (1999) and M.Mus. (2007) at UBC. She has studied composition with Eugene Wilson, Stephen Chatman, Dorothy Chang, and Ramona Luengen. Her pieces have been read or performed by Phoenix Chamber Choir, Laudate Singers, Elektra Women's Choir, Ensemble Resonance, members of the UBC Contemporary Players, and others. By choice, she has two pianos, one cat, and no car.
Andrew Homzy
Before moving to B.C., Andrew Homzy taught Jazz Studies at Concordia University in Montreal since 1977 and is internationally known as a jazz scholar - particularly regarding the music of Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus. Many of his own compositions have been played and recorded in Montreal.
John Kastelic
John Kastelic grew up in Southern Alberta, but now calls Vancouver home. He graduated with a BMus from UBC in May 2010 with a double major in composition and music scholarship. Past composition instructors include Giorgio Magnanensi, Michael Bushnell, and Keith Hamel. He is also an active violist, performing classical, contemporary, and pop music. He plays a motley assortment of instruments as a member of the four-piece improv band, The Dekumpozers Uhv.
Elizabeth Knudsen
Elizabeth Knudsen is a Vancouver-based freelance composer, private teacher, and cellist. She holds a BFA from SFU, and an MMus from UBC. Her works have been read and/or performed by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Victoria Symphony, West Coast Symphony, Phoenix Chamber Choir, musica intima, Chor Leoni Men’s Choir, DaCapo Chamber Choir, and Turning Point Ensemble as well as by soloists Ariel Barnes (cello) and Oliver de Clercq (horn) among others. Recent works have been heard at Vancouver’s Sonic Boom Festival, the Open Ears Festival in Kitchener ON, Baie des Chaleurs International Chamber Music Festival in Dalhousie NB, the New Music Festival at California State University Fullerton, and broadcast on CBC Radio 2. She was winner of the Association of Canadian Women Composers’ national choral composing competition in 2005, and is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre.
Yota Kobayashi
Acoustic and electro-acoustic composer, Yota Kobayashi was born in Nagoya, Japan in 1980. He moved to Vancouver, Canada in 2000 and studied music composition at Simon Fraser University under professors Barry Truax and Owen Underhill. Yota works as a teacher in the Electronic Music Programme at Langara College and the Sound Design Programme at Stylus College of Music.
In 2006, Yota’s composition Reminiscence was awarded the third prize in Canada’s national competition for electro-acoustic music, Prix Jeu de temps / Times Play. Yota was appointed to serve on the international jury for the competition in 2007. Reminiscence has been performed at several concerts and radiobroadcast in Canada, the US, Chile, Sweden, and France. Yota’s music has been performed publicly numerous times, including Vancouver Pro Musica's Sonic Boom festival in 2007, the Bourges International Festival of Electroacoustic Music in France, as well as a Jean Coulthard reading by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
Yota’s scores for film and theatre include the documentary film, Adaptive Greening (which was awarded the United Nations Environmental Program award in Turin, Italy in 2008), the Vancouver International Dance Festival dance/theatre piece, Mothers in 2007, and the score for the short film Hirsute, which has screened at many international film festivals.
Chris Kovarik
Chris Kovarik no longer tells people when he was born—suffice it to say he’s getting old. He went to school a while back, but didn’t stay too long. He does like to think he managed to pick up a few things, though. So now he writes a little and plays a little and works a little. And he is completely unable to balance the disparate threads of his life (opera, music publishing, Indian food). He is not on Facebook and does not own a cell phone.
Daniel Larrain
Daniel Larraín was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, but has lived most of his life in Chile. There, after having studied Architecture for three years, he decided to quit and focus on Music. He took courses at the Universidad de Chile, and then he enrolled in the Music Institute of the Universidad Católica de Chile, where he studied composition under the guidance of outstanding Chilean composers Alejandro Guarello and Pablo Aranda. He has composed many works for different kinds of ensembles, which have been performed in both academic and non-academic settings. He is now living in Vancouver, where he has come to continue his musical studies, and has kept composing and submitting works for festivals and competitions. His recent work for orchestra “In a medium-size bowl” was selected for the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s Jean Coulthard Readings, 10 March 2010 at the Orpheum Theatre.
Sebastian Laskowski
Sebastian Laskowski is currently completing a BFA in Music Composition at the SFU School for the Contemporary Arts. He is interested in working in collaborative environments, especially for dance and film.
Michael Lau
Michael Lau graduated with a BA in Music from UBC in 2002, having earlier earned a Bachelor’s in Mathematics from SFU. While at SFU, he studied musical composition for four semesters. Although he began the study of classical guitar when he was about thirteen, he has always been fond of composing. He first appeared in Sonic Boom in 2001 as composer of a saxophone quintet, performed by Julie Nolan and colleagues. He has been occupied for a number of years with his business (not related to music), but because of his passion for music, he is now returning to composition.
Josh Layne
Josh Layne (n. 1977) began his harp studies with harpist Kathryn Ely in 1990. Three and a half years later, in 1994, he gave his first full-length recital. In the course of 14 years of performance, he has engaged, entertained, and entranced audiences in Canada and the US with the major solo harp repertoire. All three of his recordings of solo harp music are available at his website: www.joshlayne.com. He recently began composing, and his composition "Passage" was selected to be part of Sonic Boom 2006. His second composition, "Rhapsody", was completed in the spring of 2007 and was premiered by him in Marylhurst, Oregon on 22 April 2007.
Yetta Lin
Yetta Lin was born in Taichung, Taiwan, and moved to Vancouver in 1998. She is currently a fourth-year student at the Simon Fraser University School of Contemporary Arts, studying under Martin Gotfrit, Owen Underhill, ARne Eigenfeldt, and David K. MacIntyre. Her work "Pupil" was performed publicly at the West Coast Composer Symposium at UBC in early 2007. She has been playing classical piano, flute and a dab of violin and vocals since childhood. Recently she has expanded her field by doing collaborations in dance and film.
David Litke
Originally from St. Catherines, Ontario, David Litke (b. 1977) completed his undergraduate studies in composition at the University of Toronto. He is currently engaged in doctoral studies under the guidance of Keith Hamel and is exploring techniques of spectral music in his research. In 2005, he was selected by the Ensemble Contemporain de Montreal to particpate in their "Generation 2006" project; the project culminated in a nationwide tour with the ensemble in Octorber 2006. He has received numerous awards and fellowships from both U of T and UBC, and his "Piece for Flute and Voice" was awarded first prize in the Pierre Mercure division of SOCAN's Young Composers' competition (2003). His music has been performed in the Sonic Boom Festival in Vancouver, as well as the Esprit Orchestra's New Waves Festival in Toronto and the SMC'07 conference in Lefkada, Greece. He is currently collaborating with Francois Houle on a new piece for clarinet and electonics.
Colin MacDonald
Colin MacDonald studied jazz arranging with Fred Stride, world rhythms with Glen Velez and Trichy Sankaran, and Balinese gamelan with Michael Tenzer and Dewa Ketut Alit. His works have been premiered by the Turning Point Ensemble, Continuum Contemporary Music, the Ad Mare Wind Quintet, the Microscore Project, and the Vancouver-based Fringe Group, who commissioned the percussion quartet “Enginuity”. His compositions “Ex Libris” and “Dragons in the Air” were part of the successful Vertical Orchestra spatial music performances at the Vancouver Public Library. Pianist Marguerite Witvoet recently premiered his solo piano work “Palomita” at the International Festival of Contemporary Music in Lima, Peru. In 2006 he formed his own chamber orchestra, The Colin MacDonald Pocket Orchestra, to present his original works. www.crypticmusic.ca
Stuart P. Martin
Stuart P. Martin (b. 1948) was introduced to classical music in high school, playing Schubert in the school orchestra. Despite lack of support from his family, he plugged away, had many good musical experiences, and studied with some great musicians as well. Composition instructors have included Sir Malcolm Arnold, Courtland Hultberg, John Rea, Tom Borugian, and Martin Humphries. His music has been performed by and at the Vancouver Youth Orchestra (Simon Streatfield, cond.), Shawnigan Lake Summer School (Malcolm Arnold; Angela Cavadas, violin), the Vancouver Women’s Musical Club, the UBC World AIDS Day Concert, Concordia University, and Sonic Boom.
Duncan Maunders
Duncan Maunders was born in 1989. He grew up and currently lives in North Vancouver. He is enrolled in the Jazz Studies program at Capilano University, and is studying composition with Bradshaw Pack.
David Mesiha
David Mesiha has been heavily involved in the new music scene in Vancouver for the past four years while studying composition at SFU. His biggest contributions have been heard in Vancouver’s vibrant theatre community. He has always strived to bring complete compositional ideas within the theatre world and to have theatre be as comfortable a setting for his music as the concert hall. His compositional style varies greatly, from daring chamber music to highly emotive elctroacoustic music that builds upon a strong foundation in music technology research. As a new graduate of SFU, he hopes to continue contributing musically to Vancouver’s art scene and challenging himself through integrating music in mixed artistic media.
Jeffrey Mettlewsky
Jeffrey Mettlewsky is a recent graduate of Simon Fraser University preparing for graduate studies in the fall of 2008 in the music and technology area. His interests include electronic music composed of acoustic instruments, particularly with the voice; also, the listener's aural mappings of image and space through recorded sound.
Lisa Kay Miller
Lisa Cay Miller’s performance and composition combines varied styles: contemporary music, jazz, free improvisation and musique actuelle. Her compositions have been premiered by the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, The Left Coast Ensemble, Earplay (San Francisco), the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Standing Wave, the Turning Point Ensemble, and the Vancouver Chinese Instrumental Music Society (Vancouver). She is collaborating with director Marv Newland on a film for the National Film Board of Canada. She produced and completed a commission for Circus Maximus, a multi-media performance/installation, with Edgeffect, the experimental Music Collective, Inter_mission, Radix Society, and butoh-a-go-go. She performs with Eyvind Kang, Dylan van der Schyff, Peggy Lee, Jesse Zubot, Ron Samworth, Brad Turner, François Houle, the NOW Orchestra and ion zoo. Her CDs, The lisa miller octet; Sleep Furiously, The music of lisa miller; Q and The lisa miller trio; open have received rave international reviews. The lisa miller trio recently toured Brazil.
Jocelyn Morlock
With a discography of twelve CDs, and numerous performances and broadcasts throughout North America and Europe, Jocelyn MORLOCK is becoming known as one of Canada’s leading composers. Her international career was launched at the 1999 ISCM World Music Days with performances of her quartet “Bird in the Tangled Sky”. She has written for the 2008 Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition (“Involuntary Love Songs”) and the 2005 Montreal International Music Competition, for which she wrote “Amore”, a work that has received over 50 performances and broadcasts. Highlights of the past season include: “Cobalt”, a double violin concerto for the NACO, and a large-scale collaboration with Aeriosa Dance Ensemble for the 2010 Cultural Olympiad. Recent recordings of her work include musica intima’s Into Light, (2010 WCMA Classical Album of the Year) and Fringe Percussion’s debut album; upcoming projects include a new double concerto for the Agassiz International Chamber Music Festival. www.jocelynmorlock.com
John Mutter
John Mutter is a composer, producer, artistic director of The Blanket Orchestra, ensemble leader, improviser, performer, guitarist, electronic musician, and graphic designer from Vancouver. He has written and produced two full length albums with his music / visual arts collective, we just stole a car, and has performed with internationally acclaimed improvisers at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival and other venues and festivals around British Columbia. He is the leader of six ensembles and creator and curator of onetwothreefourfivesixseven, a concert series for improvised and experimental music. He studied composition with Giorgio Magnanensi at VCC, graduating in 2010. With Canada Council grant support, he is currently studying composition with Benoit Delbecq in Paris.
Linda Nessel
Linda Nessel attended Grant MacEwan Community College in Edmonton, Alberta in the piano performance program. After several years in Toronto, working as a dance accompanist, solo performer, and as a composer, she relocated to Vancouver and furthered her education at Simon Fraser University. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree in 1998, where she studied with Rodney Sharman, Rudolph Komorous, and Owen Underhill.
Linda Nessel has composed solo, chamber, and orchestral pieces for Ensemble Symposium, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver New Music Festival, and Sonic Boom.
Brian Nesselroad
Brian Nesselroad received undergraduate degrees in music and mathematics at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington. As a member of the CWU Percussion Ensemble, Brian was chosen to perform at the 1995 Percussive Arts Society International Comvention in Phoenix. He was also selected by the music faculty to perform a marimba concerto with the CWU Wind Ensemble and to perform a marimba solo at the CWU Honors Convocation. Brian received his Master of Music degree in percussion performance from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he was a recipient of the Swanson Family Percussion Fellowship. Brian is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in percussion performance at the University of British Columbia. He has performed with the Vancouver Symphony, Yakima Symphony Orchestra, Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra, Uptown-Lowdown Dixieland Orchestra, Andrew Spencer and Friends Marimba Band, Leavenworth Summer Theatre, Mid-Valley Performing Arts, CWU Theatre Arts Department, Champaign-Urbana Theatre Company, and Vancouver New Music.
Bruce Nielson
Bruce Nielsen has been composing chamber music for 14 years. He has a B.Mus. in Composition from UBC. In addition to his university studies, Bruce spent 3 summer sessions at the Banff Centre for the Arts where he studied jazz performance and composition. He performed as a jazz drummer for 20 years, working and touring with many of Canada’s finest musicians both as a sideman and as a bandleader. He toured Canada, the US, and Europe, composed and recorded two CDs under his own name and has been featured on several others. He was awarded numerous grants from the Canada Council to study in New York and tour his own jazz quartet. Currently retired from the stage, Bruce is teaching music/band in the Vancouver School District, composing, contemplating the impact humanity has on the planet and the potential importance (or impotence) of art in the 21st century.
Ryan Noakes
Ryan Noakes was born in Kamloops, British Columbia, where he grew up thinking that life was a musical with both his parents playing and singing along with records all the time. An accomplished singer, he has been a member of numerous choirs and vocal ensembles and has performed in several musical theatre productions. He received the BMus with Distinction from UVic in 2008, majoring in composition with Christopher Butterfield. While at UVic he was twice recipient of the Murray Adaskin Prize in Music Composition. After graduating from UVic, he was instrumental in the creation of the Vancouver Island Chamber Choir as a founding member, manager, and composer-in-residence. Currently working toward the MMus in composition at UBC under Dorothy Chang and Keith Hamel, he has performed across North America, and his compositions have been performed in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland.
Jordan Nobles
To date Jordan Nobles has written over seventy-five works for various ensembles, from soloists to orchestras, and his music has been recorded on CD and has appeared in short films, theatre, live television and radio. Recently his music has been released on German’s Spektral label, won
first prize in the Vancouver Bach Choir’s National Competition for Large Choirs, and has been chosen to represent Canada at the International Society for Contemporary Music’s 2009 World Music Days in Sweden. Recent premieres include “Emergent Behaviour” for New York’s Flexible Orchestra, “Entropy” for the VSO, and “A Sign in Space” for the SoundaXis Festival performed inside the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum. He was a featured composer in the Windsor Canadian Music Festival in February 2010 and collaborated with Aeriosa Dance as part of the 2010 Cultural Olympiad. He will have his new work “Six Variations” premiered simultaneously by six of Canada’s leading new music ensembles in different cities across the country on 15 May 2010. He was named the 2009 Emerging Artist in Music for the City of Vancouver’s Mayor’s Arts Awards.
John Oliver
Multiple-award-winning composer and performer John Oliver writes opera, orchestra, chamber, and electroacoustic music; performs chamber music as a guitarist; and presents his own special immersive music playing special guitars into computer software which then distributes the music through loudspeaker orchestras surrounding the audience. Performed extensively in his native Canada, his music has also been performed in Europe and the Americas and heard worldwide on recordings from empreintes DIGITALes, earsay, CBC Records, ZaDiscs, SNE, and McGill University Records. He holds a doctorate from McGill University.
James O'Callaghan
James O’Callaghan (b.1988) is an emerging composer and sound artist. His music, equally concentrated on acoustic and electroacoustic idioms, explores ideas of semiotics, politics, spectralism and montage. He has received several commissions as a composer, sound designer and performer for dance, film, and theatre work, and his electroacoustic music has been performed across Canada, the USA, and New Zealand. He completed his BFA (honours) in music composition at SFU in December 2010. His research has been published and presented internationally.
Aaron Oppenheim
Aaron Oppenheim is a composer completing his last year in music studies at the SFU School for Contemporary Arts. He has also studied electroacoustic composition at Concordia University in Montreal. While most of his work has been in electroacoustic composition, during the past few years he has also been exploring acoustic composition, live electronic music performance, and generative sound installations. His pieces have been performed at Concordia University’s EuCuE concerts and SFU’s Student Composers concerts.
Ed Paik
Ed Paik is currently studying composition at the University of British Columbia with Dr. Keith Hamel. He has previously studied music composition with Doug Smith at Douglas College, where dedicated instrumentalists performed several of his works. Additionally, he has recently released his first CD titled First Works. Ed Paik also plays the electric and classical guitar and has performed in concerts around the Vancouver area at venues such as the Plaza Club and Tom Lee. He hopes to be more involved with the local music scene in the near future.
Dubravko Pajalic
Born in Zagreb, Dubravko Pajalic graduated in musicology from Zagreb University. Later he continued his studies in Vienna, studying computer science and informatics. He is a versatile musician, having studied privately flute, guitar, conducting, and composition. Since immigrating to Canada he conducts a number
of community and church choirs. His compositions reflect his eclectic background. He works as an IT manager in a research facility in Vancouver.
Michael Park
Michael Park, a young Canadian composer from Winnipeg, holds both an ARCT (Toronto, 2003) and a BMus (Manitoba, 2007) in Piano Performance. In composition, he completed his MMus at The University of Western Ontario and is currently working toward a DMA at UBC under the supervision of Dorothy Chang. While pursuing his undergraduate studies in piano, his involvement with improvisation and multi-disciplinary collaboration led him to studies in composition. He has received several commissions and has composed music for a dance film produced with the support of the National Film Board. He recently completed a commission for Toronto bassoonist Susan Durnin and is currently writing a song cycle for soprano Sandra Bender. As a pianist, he regularly performs his own works as well as those of colleagues.
Aexander Pechenyuk
Alexander Pechenyuk, born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, has been playing violin since the age of seven. After finishing high school he entered the Tashkent State University of Economics, and it is here that he began writing music. Upon completing his Master's Degree in Economics, he entered the Composition Faculty of the Tashkent State Conservatory where he graduated with a Master's Degree in Composition in 1986. Since the, his symphonic and chamber compositions have been performed at concerts and festivals throughout Russia and Europe. In 2001, he immigrated to Canada. He is presently based in North Vancouver, where he continies to composes, teach, and perform.
Timothy Pickett
Timothy Pickett, born 1962 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is currently nearing the completion of a DMA in composition at UBC, where he has studied with Stephen Chatman, Keith Hamel, and Michael Tenzer. He holds BM and MM degrees in composition from the New England Conservatory, where he studied with Robert DiDomenica and Malcolm Peyton. He also studied jazz piano with Robert Harris and Ron DiSalvio, occasionally performing in public on piano and trumpet and as a vocalist. He has devoted the entirety of his compositional career (beginning in 1975) to the integration of Western classical compositional techniques with the idioms towards which he has naturally gravitated, such as jazz and Latin music. As a music theorist, he is developing a harmonic theory based on frequency relationships derived from acoustical theory and the observation of nature. His music has been enthusiastically received at the Alice Tully Hall in New York, the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, the Cosmos Club in Washington, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Round Top and Bar Harbor Music Festivals and the Wednesday Noon-Hour, Mixtophonics, and Sonic Boom concert series in Vancouver. Recently, his piano cycle Syncretismus was premiered in a six-city concert tour of Japan by Esther Budiarjo.
Nicholas Piper
Nicholas Piper is a native of Ottawa, Ontario, where he completed a Bachelor of Music at Carleton University (2007) with Honours in Composition and Musicology. Nicholas has earned numerous awards including the University Medal in Music from Carleton University and the President's Award from the University of Victoria. His Honours' Portfolio includes a choral cantata, Alleluia: Life Is Victorious and research paper, Progressive Rock: The Synthesis of Art and Pop. Nicholas had three commissions premiered in Ottawa including music for the short film Misfiled (2006, Felan Parker & Bohemian Designs); Pour Down Ye Heavens From Above (2007, St. Matthias' Anglican Church); and Deux chansons de La Belle Cordière (2008, Diane Hachem & Luke Arnason). Nicholas is now a resident of Victoria, British Columbia, where he is reading toward a Master's in Composition at the University of Victoria with the support of the SSHRC.
Paul Plimley
Paul Plimley has been creating music since the early 1970s. He has written for numerous soundtracks, gamelan, big band, solo works and small ensembles. There are more than 20 recordings released of his music on cd (and 3 LPs, a little nostalgia for the old folks here).
Marci Rabe
Marci Rabe, M.Mus., is a composer and performer interested in playing outside the box. Her music is intuitively chiseled and has a harmonic language based on colour more than function. Subtle nuances in colour and texture fill a continuum of time where pulse has little bearing. Silence, too, is an integral colour on her palette. Her work enjoys performances by some of Canada’s most revered performers and is gaining international recognition with recent performances in the United States, Denmark, and Japan.
Jordan Raine
Jordan Raine is a third-year music major at SFU.
Christopher Reiche
Christopher Reiche is a composer, performer and improviser who is currently living in Victoria. He completed his Masters of Music in Composition at the University of Victoria where he has studied composition with Christopher Butterfield and Anna Höstman. His undergraduate degree is from Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo Ontario where he studied composition with Linda C. Smith and Peter Hatch and piano with Anya Alexeyev. In September 2008 the Aventa Ensemble premiered his work Spectrum of a Gesture as part of their young composer’s workshop. In his spare time, he can be found playing new works by his friends, improvising with LaSaM or teaching piano lessons. His works have been performed by the Quatuor Bozzini, The Vancouver Miniaturist Ensemble, the Aventa Ensemble, and the orkest de ereprijs in the Netherlands.
Felipe Ribeiro
Felipe Ribeiro was born (1980) in Brazil and is currently a second-year graduate student at the University of Victoria (M.Mus. in composition) with Dr. Daniel Peter Biro and Gordon Mumma as his supervisors. Ribeiro has a B.Mus. (Universidade Federal do Parana) with emphasis in composition and music technology, styudying with Dr. Rodolfo Coelho de Souza and Dr. Mauricio Dottori; also a Licentiate in Music at the Escola de Moesica e Belas Artes do Parana studying guitar with Dr. Orlando Fraga. He has been writing music for several kinds of groups, including electroacoustics and live electronics compositions. He is involved with spectral aesthetics as well as the many possibilities of Computer-Aided Composition, using software such s Max/MSP, Spear, and Open Music. He is currently working on a spectral analysis of a berimbau sample (Brazilian folk instrument) to generate potential compositional material for small and large ensembles.
Theresa Richert
Teresa Richert is a graduate of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Piano Performance, Piano Teaching, and Composition and Theory. She also holds Bachelor of Science and Applied Science degrees in Management & Systems Science and Computer Engineering from SFU. A teacher of piano and music theory for over 20 years, she is also becoming established as a composer with works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo instruments and voice. Several of her compositions have been performed by professional ensembles and students across Canada. Selections from her solo piano collections are published in the BC Conservatory of Music’s Horizons books and the Canadian National Conservatory of Music’s Northern Lights books. The Maple Tree for solo voice with piano accompaniment was a winner of the 2010 Canadian Federation of Teachers’ Associations Call for Compositions. www.richertmusic.com
Sylvia Rickard
Sylvia Rickard, born 1937 in East York, came to Vancouver in 1948. Piano and theory were her extra school studies all through high school. Music and languages have always been her twin passions. At UBC, she received a BA in French and Russian in 1959. Next year, at the Universite de Grenoble, she obtsained her Second Degre. Travel in West Germany, France, India, and the US diverted her from musical study. In 1973, she began private composition lessons with Jean Coulthard, under whose guidance she found listeners to her music. She wrote piano music, then music for chamber ensemble, both vocal and instrumental, and later opera and orchestral music. Art and cabaret songs followed. her music has been performed in Hungary, Germany, Sweden, Italy, England, Japan, the US, and Canada. She values lyricism, drama, and humour in music. Some great performers of her oeuvre include John Kimura Parker, Taras and Gaelyne Gabora, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, Gary Karr, and Desmond and Gwen Hoebig.
Martin Ritter
Martin Ritter writes both electroacoustic and acoustic works and develops software tools in different languages. He has worked for theatrical productions, creating sound design as well as collaborating with performers such as Jesse Read, Corey Hamm, Paolo Bortolussi, Ralph Markham, and Kenneth Broadway. He has worked with ensembles like the Phoenix Chamber Choir, Vancouver Chamber Choir, and Standing Wave and is active in the Vancouver Sonic Boom festivals. He is an educator, teaching music fundamentals to children, a teaching assistant and research assistant at UBC, and has sporadically worked with various organizations in the Vancouver area as a computer programmer and audio technician. His composition instructors include Mark Armanini, Stephen Chatman, Bob Pritchard, and Keith Hamel, and he has become involved with the UBC Media And Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre (MAGIC) research group as well as the Music Sound and Electroacoustic Technologies (MuSET) research group. Currently he is pursuing his DMA in composition at UBC.
Benton Roark
Drawing on a rich background of artistic experience, Benton Roark’s creations are concerned with the various intersections of diverse forms of expression such as theatre, art song, electronic sound, chamber music, and various folk musics and mythologies. His works have been performed and read in North America and in Europe by a variety of ensembles, including the Penderecki String Quartet, the Aventa Ensemble, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the Bozzini String Quartet, Théatre Re, the McGregor/Nesselroad/Chan Trio, the UBC Strings, the Victoria Symphony Orchestra, UBC Contemporary Players, the Turtle Island String Quartet, and the Tempest Flute Ensemble. He has acted in devising and directing roles in the Babel Theatre workshop, UBC Interdisciplinary Arts performances, and stagings of his own works. As a writer he counts two stage works and no fewer than fifty individual lyrics to his credit. As a composer, he has completed residencies and programs with the Erasmus IP Project in Cuneo, Italy, at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada, the Fontainebleau Sessions in France, the Czech American Institute in Prague, and the Konservatorium Winterthur in Switzerland. He holds degrees from Oberlin College and Conservatory and UBC. His past teachers include Mathias Steinhauer, Ladislav Kubik, John Anthony Lennon, Stephen Chatman, Keith Hamel, Allain Gaussin, François Paris, Meryn Cadell, and Tom Scholte. He is currently working on a doctoral dissertation in experimental music theatre under the supervision of Dorothy Chang at UBC.
Jeffrey Ryan
Praised for his “strong and unique voice” (Winnipeg Free Press), “masterful command of instrumental colour” (Georgia Straight), and “superb attention to rhythm” (Audio Ideas Guide), Jeffrey Ryan has emerged as one of Canada’s leading composers. With awards and recognition including two Juno nominations, his music has been commissioned and performed by orchestras, ensembles, and soloists worldwide, inspired new works by choreographers Barbara Bourget and Rob Kitsos, and served as the soundtrack to the dance film Fata Morgana. He was the Vancouver Symphony’s Composer Laureate for the 2008/09 season, after serving as Composer-in-Residence from 2002 to 2007. 2010 added to his growing discography with recordings by musica intima, the Canadian Chamber Choir, and pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, with a release by the Vancouver Symphony upcoming. He holds degrees from Wilfrid Laurier University, the University of Toronto and The Cleveland Institute of Music. www.jeffreyryan.com
Farshid Samandari
Farshid Samandari was born in Iran in 1971. His music reflects his interest in contemporary classical vocabulary, spectral analysis, and extended techniques. In addition his profound faith in Unity in diversity stirred him toward utilizing different elements from a variety of non-western music and integrating different cultural music and vocabulary in his compositions. This vision directed him to collaborate with a variety of choirs and ensembles including Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Tehran National Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra, Laudate Singers, Red Chamber, Nu:BC Collective, Turning Point Ensemble, Orchid Ensemble, Erato, Parto, and the UBC guitar Quartet, as well as soloists such as Ariel Barnes, Jeremy Berkman, Sahba Motallebi, Mark McGregor, Julia Nolan, Bo Peng, Michael Strutt, and Eric Wilson. The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra prmiered his Olympic commission in May 2007. He joined the board of Vancouver Pro Musica in 2005 and is currently serving as president. He is currently pursuing his studies towards a DMA in Composition at UBC.
Jared Schimnosky
Jared K. Schimnosky (b. 1978) is currently an undergraduate student at UBC. A diverse musical background, combined with a fascination by metaphysics, astronomy, and the ever-changing structures of the human psyche, provide a wide range of influences that colour and shape his work.
Ernst Schneider
Ernst Schneider received his early music training in Herford, Germany. In 1958 he immigrated to Canada, where he continued his music education. Among his teachers were Lloyd Powell, Helen Silvester, and the well-known west coast composer Jean Coulthard.
Compositions of Ernst Schneider include works for piano, voice, chamber groups, and orchestra. His music has been performed on radio and television, in festivals and concerts in Canada, USA, and Europe.
Ernst Schneider has done a great deal to promote Canadian music through his many lectures, workshops, and a weekly two-hour radio program. He makes his home in Penticton, British Columbia. Member of CMC, CLC, SOCAN
Lucas Schuller
Lucas Schuller has been making up music since performances at Vancouver’s jazz and folk festivals inspired him to wear his pyjama bottoms on his head and bang on whatever noise makers he could get his little hands on. He began Composing though, while studying jazz drumset at Vancouver Community College. He then went on to complete a BFA in composition from SFU. He hasn’t written that much since graduating save for some really good brass arrangements for a folk-rock record, and the score for a short student film. His excuse is that he has been quite busy working in artist management, playing in two bands, serving on volunteer boards and playing recreational sports. He has lived in east Vancouver for 27 of his 28 years, though he moves further and further south as the rent continues to rise.
Chris Sivak
Chris Sivak is a composer currently residing in Vancouver. He recently graduated from UBC’s composition program where he studied with Stephen Chatman and Dorothy Chang. He has enjoyed recent collaborations with the Vancouver Symphony, musica intima, the Phoenix Chamber Choir, Elecktra Women’s Choir, the Vancouver Peace Choir, and theNu:BC Collective. Projects on the go include several song cycles, a set of choral pieces based on the poetry of Jalaluddin Rumi, and an ever-expanding catalogue of chamber music. He is also an active conductor and enjoys making music with an eclectic cast of characters.
Connor Stuart
Conor Stuart was born (1989) in Richmond, BC, where he continues to live. He is currently pursuing a dual-degree program at UBC in music composition and civil engineering. He is studying composition with Jeffrey Ryan and violin with Mark Ferris.
Remy Sui
Remy Sui is currently an undergraduate student at SFU Contemporary Arts studying Music Composition and Film. He lives in New Westminster, BC.
Glenn Sutherland
Glenn Sutherland (b. 1956) of Vancouver, B.C. is a conservation biologist and consultant. He composes in his spare time, and is studying composition privately with Michael Trew and jazz theory with Lane Price. His choral compositions have been performed and recorded by choir ensembles in Vancouver and Winnipeg, Canada. Glenn is an active chorister, is a Past President of the musica intima Society and volunteers with the Canadian Music Centre (B.C. Region).
Joël Tibbits
Joël Tibbits is a Vancouver-based composer, film director and writer. He is currently completing his newest film “filament”, a 45-minute short film that explores the soul’s path. In his musical work, he endeavours to continually deepen his understanding of sonic architecture in order to manifest events of sound that facilitate the expansion of human consciousness towards personal and communal awareness.
Michael Trew
Michael Trew has wide performing and composing experience in a variety of musical genres, including rock, classical, jazz, and the healing arts. He began studying composition with Cortland Hultberg at UBC, graduating with a BMus in 1972. Subsequently he obtained a Professional Teaching Certificate (1976) before returning to obtain a Master’s (1980) and Doctorate (1986) in Music Composition. His teachers included Stephen Chatman, Paul Reale, and Elaine Barkin. Currently he teaches piano, theory, history and composition privately, and performs as an accompanist with solo vocal artists in Vancouver.
Edward Top
Edward Top is a composer whose music is characterized by a pluriform style, expressing both the balance and the struggle between different musical traditions and identities. Born in The Netherlands in 1972, Top has lived and worked in London for 7 years, and has now relocated to Vancouver. He has received commissions from the Schoenberg Ensemble, Holland Symfonia, Calefax, and the Birmingham Conservatoire, and his works have been performed by Tokyo Sinfonietta, San Diego New Music, the Doelen String Quartet, and the Dutch Radio Kamer Filharmonie. Having received several prizes for his compositions, recently he was nominated for best work of 2008 in the Netherlands during the Toonzetters competition. He is currently working on commissions for the Raschèr Saxophone Quartet and the Doelen Ensemble in Rotterdam. At the Rotterdam Conservatoire in Holland, he studied composition with Peter-Jan Wagemans. He also completed an MMus at King’s College, London (UK).
Daniel Tones
Daniel Tones is an award-winning percussionist who devotes a great deal of time to fostering creative development in aspiring musicians. He holds a doctorate in performance and ethnomusicology from the University of British Columbia, and has studied with some of Canada's most respected percussionists, including Salvatore Ferreras, Russell Hartenberger, and John Rudolph. He has appeared at music festivals on three continents, and has been broadcast nationally on radio and television.
Julio Torres
Julio Torres was born in Morelia, México. He began his studies at the Conservatorio de las Rosas in Morelia. In 2001 he moved to Victoria, BC to study at the Victoria Conservatory of Music, where he had a lot of fun. After graduating from SFU in the spring of 2010, he has been trying to have even more fun.
Lan Tung
Originally from Taiwan, Lan Tung is an erhu/Chinese violin soloist, composer, producer and arts administrator. She incorporates Chinese music with contemporary expressions and explores music outside her tradition, from New Music, and creative improvisation, to various ethnic traditions, such as Indian, to Flamenco, and Central Asian. As the artistic director of the JUNO nominated Orchid Ensemble, Lan has toured extensively in North America working with composers, musicians, dancers, and visual and media artists of various cultural backgrounds. She is the vice president of the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra and performs with Tandava and Birds of Paradox.
Rita Ueda
Rita Ueda is a composer, sound designer and music teacher in Vancouver. Her recent works include “forty years of snowfall will not heal an ancient forest” for the Vancouver Symphony “Tokei no Oto Nimo (In the Sound of a Clock)” for Musica Intima, and “Escape from the Evil Alien Surf-Blasters” for 8 hands, 2 pianos. Her string orchestra work, “as the snowflakes return to the sky”, was awarded 2nd prize in the 2010 International Mahler Composition Competition. As a sound designer, she has worked as director of sound for numerous films and DVD titles such as The Encyclopaedia of British Columbia and Masks: Faces of the Pacific. She studied composition and sound design at SFU and the California Institute of the Arts. Her teachers include Rudolf Komoros, Rodney Sharman, David MacIntyre, Wadada Leo Smith, Morton Subotnick, and David Rosenboom.
Leslie Uyeda
Leslie Uyeda, born in Montreal, is a composer, conductor, and pianist. From 1992 to 2004 she was choral music director for Vancouver Opera, where she also conducted several mainstage productions. She has been chorus director/conductor/coach for Manitoba Opera, Opera Hamilton, the Canadian Opera Company, The Banff Centre, the Chautauqua Institute of Music, L'Opera de Montreal, the Victoria Summer Vocal Academy, and UBC. She has performed in recital with Brett Polegato, Richard Margison, Tracy Dahl, Liping Zhang, Heather Pawsey, Judith Forst, Jean Stilwell, and Viviane Houle. Her song cycle "The First Woman", was premiered last June in the opening gala concert of the Vancouver International Song Institute (VISI) by Heather Pawsey and pianist Rena Sharon. Her choral compositions have been performed and recorded by the Elektra Women's Choir, Chor Leoni, the Phoenix Chamber Choir, and the Beata Vocal Ensemble. Her compositions are published by the Avondale Press and Classica Music.
Russel Unfreed
In his twenties, after having always closely listened to music, Russell Unfreed finally taught himself to play piano. Although lacking formal training, he scribbled down his music throughout the following years. In 2002 he began choral singing, an activity presenting opportunity for connecting with composers and teachers like Nicholas Fairbank, Lanny Pollet, and Stephen Brown. In 2006 he audited Lanny Pollet’s orchestration course at UVic. He has subsequently submitted entries to Sonic Boom every year since 2007, receiving ‘readings’ in every year but one—the Nu:BC Collective having read through his 2008 entry. In November, 2009 his piece “Estudio 9-8” was publicly performed by the Matheson / Roper / Mollerup Trio in a Further East / Further West concert at Vancouver Community College. John van Deursen’s Orchestra Armonia performed his “Suite for an Irish Mother” in Sonic Boom 2010.
Elliot Vaughan
Elliot Vaughan is currently studying composition at SFU Contemporary Arts. He likes punctuation and is increasingly interested in saints.
Michael Vincent
As a young Canadian artist, Michael Vincent has been composing unique pieces that defy categorization. Billed as "one of Canada's most audacious new composers" (The Western Front), he has collaborated in a number of contexts from concert music to large-scale theatre productions. His most noted projects include collaborations with Generation X author Douglas Coupland, plunderphonics composer John Oswald, choreographer Jennifeer Mascall, experimental filmmaker Amanda Christie, videographer Jacqueline Levitin, and spoken word artists Barbara Adler, Brendan McLeod and RC Weslowski. He was honoured with the 2003 Allan Award in electroacoustic composition and the 2004 SFU Arts Service Award. He holds advanced degrees from Concordia University (2004) and SFU (2006) and currently plans to pursue doctoral studies in composition in the fall of 2008. www.michaelvincent.ca
Mark Whitmore
Mark Whitmore, 29, grew up in a musical family in the suburb of North Delta, BC. Being the youngest of four children, he was influenced the most to pursue music as a career. He was first inspired to compose music when he learned that his great-grandfather had composed an alternate setting to a church hymn. As he grew, he became self-taught in theory, trombone, composition, and piano amongst other things, learning only the basics from others. He is currently studying trombone and composition at Vancouver Community College. To date, he has composed many songs of various styles, two jazz band charts, a suite for string quartet for his own wedding, and a tone poem for SATB choir, amongst other compositions. He looks forward to making a successful career as a trombonist, composer, teacher, husband to his wife Marlene, and father to his newborn daughter Isabella.
Brian Wong
Brian Wong (b.1984) is a composer with interests in music of the romantic and impressionistic eras, jazz, and film. He has taken composition lessons with Timothy Pickett and completed a music degree at UBC.
Ryszard Wrzaskala
Ryszard Wrzaskala was born (1932) in Żnin, Poland. He achieved a Master of Arts from the Conservatory of Music in Wrocław and became director/conductor of the Legnica Symphony Orchestra. After wining first prize in a song competition, he moved to Warsaw, where he was active as a composer, arranger for the Polish Radio, and later Music director and conductor of the National Dance Company of Poland “Mazowsze”. In 1969 he immigrated to Canada, where he worked in night clubs, taught school band and music in Vancouver. He continued to compose in many genres: classical, jazz and pop for solo instruments as well as symphonic works. Wrzaskala has completed many commissioned works and won over thirty international awards, including three gold medals for his song writing skills. His educational music is used by the Canadian National Conservatory of Music and is published by Northern Lights. Polish publishers: PWM and Syncopa. He lives in Surrey, BC.
Daniel York
Daniel York is in his fourth year of the Bachelor of Music programme at UBC. Currently under the mentorship of Professor Keith Hamel, his past composition teachers have also included, Michael Bushnell, Professor Dorothy Chang, Professor David MacIntyre, Doug Smith and private orchestration lessons by David Gordon Duke. Many of Mr. York's pieces have been performed by reknown performers such as Bramwell Tovey and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra as part of the Jean Coulthard Reading, Chor Leoni Men’s Choir, Sue Round, Ari Barnes, Joseph Elworthy, Kathryn Cernauskas and Ben Goheen. Mr. York's most recent accomplishment is writing a film score for a feature length film entitled Blind Sight by Andrew Zeller; performed April 2008, at the Pacific Cinemateque Theatre.
Aaron Young
The music of emerging Canadian composer Aaron Young has been performed in Canada and the United States by various professional and amateur ensembles, including the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Turning Point, and Land’s End, as well as by contemporary music ensembles at the Universities of Chicago, Louisville, British Columbia, and Humber College. As a jazz guitarist, he has appeared at various local and international music festivals in cities across the USA and Canada, and his live and recorded music has been broadcasted on the radio in both countries.
Aaron has completed various degrees in composition and jazz performance at Humber College in Toronto, the University of Louisville (Bomhardt Fellowship in Music Composition) in Kentucky, and is now completing his D.M.A degree in composition at the University of British Columbia.
Kelsey Zachary
Kelsey Zachary is an award-winning musician currently in her third year of study at UBC. She is equally comfortable writing for small and large ensembles and has had compositions performed by the Youth Symphony of the Okanagan, the Kamloops World of Music Academy Orchestra, Corey Hamm, and Iman Habibi among others. As a violinist and pianist, she regularly participates in festivals across Canada and is an avid performer of contemporary music. She has attended the Domaine Forget International Festival, the Kincardine Summer Music Festival, and the Young Artist Experience, studying with artists including Philippe Djokic, Simon Fryer, Andrew Dawes, Regis Pasquier, and Carl-Oscar Østerlind.
Jin Zhang
Jin Zhang was born in Beijing, China. He studied music at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo. Currently he holds the position of Music Director and Conductor in the Vancouver Philharmonic Orchestra, the New Westminster Symphony Orchestra, and the Vancouver Youth Symphony Intermediate Orchestra. He also conducts the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra and is an artistic director of VBCm productions. As a composer, he has received many grants from the Canada Council for the Arts. Many of his compositions and arrangements have been played by the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, the Victoria Symphony, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, and other groups. He has recently finished a second CD of his works in Beijing. This will soon be published in China.
Adam Zolty
Born in 1996, Adam Zolty is a Grade 7 student at Emily Carr Elementary School. He was first-prize winner in the Elementary Category in The Vancouver Chamber Choirs 2009 Young Composers Competition. He also received the Best of BC Award in the same competition. He studies composition and piano under the guidance and inspiration of Iman Habibi. He also enjoys listening to classical music, playing tennis, and painting.
