Hon. Anne Kang (BMus’99)
In November, B.C. Member of Legislative Assembly Anne Kang (BMus’99) was named Minister of Advanced Education and Skill Training in Premier John Horgan’s new cabinet. She previously held the position of Minister of Citizens’ Services.
Dr. Linda T. Kaastra (BMus’90, PhD’08) published Grounding the Analysis of Cognitive Processes in Music Performance: Distributed Cognition in Musical Activity (Routledge), a new book that draws from the dominant paradigms in cognitive science (distributed and embodied cognition, cognitive ethnography, anthropology, and psycholinguistic pragmatics) to provide a “translational science” of music making — from instrumental music performance to cognitive science, and vice versa.
Baritone Luka Kawabata (BMus’18, MMus’20), pianist Amy Seulky Lee (BMus’13), and tenor Ian Cleary have been chosen as Yulanda M. Faris Young Artists at the Vancouver Opera this year. The Yulanda M. Faris program “trains rising young Canadian opera artists — singers, pianists and stage directors — offering a bridge between formal academic educational programs and the professional world in a supportive and encouraging environment.” Congratulations, Ian, Amy and Luka!
Composer Jared Miller (BMus’10) won the 2020 Jan V. Matejcek New Classical Music Award — the annual SOCAN prize for “Excellence in New Classical Composition.” 2020 has been a big year for Miller. He also garnered a Juno nomination in the category of Classical Composition of the Year for his album Under Sea, Above Sky.
Flutist Mark Takeshi McGregor (BMus’95, DMA’12) won Classical Artist of the Year at the Western Canadian Music Awards. McGregor released his latest album, Lutalica: Solo Flute Music from the Pacific Rim, last December.
Dr. Stefan Sunandan Honisch (MMus’07 – Piano, MMus’08 – Composition, PhD’18 – Education) has joined the organizing committee for Music, Mediation, and Disability: Representation and Access, an upcoming online symposium devoted to this emerging area of study. Dr. Honisch joins scholars from UBC, Carleton, the University of Western Ontario, Harvard University, and the University of Chicago on the committee.
Baritone Tyler Duncan (BMus’98) has begun a professorship at the Longy School of Music at Bard College in Boston. Together, he and pianist Erika Switzer (BMus’97, MMus’00) released a new album, English Songs à la Française, on Bridge Records in August. Tyler and Erika also recorded two new videos in collaboration with Music on Main: a performance of Beethoven’s “An die ferne Geliebte” and Canadian composer Jeffrey Ryan’s new work, “Everything Already Lost.”
For National Indigenous Peoples Day (June 21st), Cree cellist and composer Cris Derksen (BMus’07) performed “New Heya,” “North,” and other songs that weave together traditional and contemporary music as part of a special online edition of the Chan Centre’s Roots and Shoots Music Education Program. In November, Cris performed a special stay-at-home Wednesday Noon Hours concert.
In August, Pianist Annie Yim (BMus’02) organized “Concerts on the Farm,” a two-day open-air music festival at Inner City Farms in Vancouver. The festival, which allowed people to experience live music while social distancing, featured performances by School of Music Professor of Piano Mark Anderson and Professor Emeritus Robert Silverman, as well as the Emily Carr String Quartet. The quartet performed works by Iman Habibi (BMus’08, MMus’10).
In November, Maestro Otto Tausk and the Vancouver Symphony performed And Birds Do Sing by composer Jennifer Butler (MMus’02, DMA’09). The concert also included Haydn’s Symphony No. 49.
Violinist Molly MacKinnon (BMus’12) recently collaborated with playwright Christine Quintana on Never the Last, a genre-bending theatre/concert piece based on the life and work of Canadian composer and violinist Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté. The show received five Jessie Richardson Theatre award nominations in 2019, and Molly and Christine won a Special Achievement Award for Outstanding Interdisciplinary Collaboration. In the summer, Molly performed one of Eckhardt Gramatté’s “Caprice No. 7” as part of the CMC’s Unaccompanied Online Series. You can watch it here.
Composer Thomas Beckman (MMus’16) saw his new work “Metatation” performed at the 2020 Artists for Conservation Exhibit and released during the 10th Annual Artists for Conservation Festival in Vancouver, B.C. The title is a play on the words ‘mutation’ (from biological evolution and the variety of life) and ‘meditation’ (the spiritual aspect of our experience when we contemplate this variation of life).
Oboist and English horn player Ron Cohen Mann (BMus’12) named to CBC’s annual “30 Hot Classical Musicians Under 30” list. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he has been posting oboe and horn tutorials on his YouTube and Instagram pages.
After two seasons at Opéra de Montréal, tenor Spencer Britten (BMus’15, MMus’17) joined the International Opera Studio at Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin where this season he will perform roles in Ariadne auf Naxos, Tannhäuser, Rigoletto, Die Zauberflöte, La Bohème, La Traviata, and more. He recently completed two summers with the Glimmerglass Festival, which occasioned his debut in France in a production of The Ghosts of Versailles at the Palace of Versailles itself, and will take part in the upcoming Neue Stimmen International Singing Competition’s Masterclass series.
This spring, pianist John Stetch (MMus’19) received a Juno nomination — his seventh — for Black Sea Suite, his latest album. John is currently teaching at the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra School of Music.
Harpist Matt Dupont (MMus’17) won second place at the 2020 Orford Music Competition, which includes a cash prize and full scholarship for a two-week residency at the Orford Music Academy.
Jacob Gramit (BMus’12) is working as artistic manager for the vocal ensemble Musica Intima. He recently designed and coordinated the launch of the group’s 20/21 season, which features a combination of pre-filmed and live-streamed concerts and offers flexible, affordable ticket options for in-person attendance, should Covid-19 restrictions be eased. Musica Intima’s first online concert was released in late October, and features percussionist Brian Nesselroad, soprano Christina Cichos (BMus’12), soprano Madeleine Lucy Smith (BMus’07), altos Risa Takahashi (MMus’12), and Katherine Evans. (School of Music staff member), tenor Taka Shimojima (BMus’18) and bass Andrew Bortz (MMus’17).
Mezzo-soprano Debi Wong (BMus’08) and re:Naissance Opera recently began work on OrpheusVR, a groundbreaking new project that immerses audiences in a virtual, mythical world where they can control the direction of the opera’s narrative, as well as the music and orchestration that drives the storytelling. UBC alumni Timothy Benton Roark (MMus’07, DMA’13) is also involved in the project as a scriptwriter.
This autumn, soprano Simone Osborne (DMPS’09) sang the roles of Norina in Gaetano Donizetti’s Don Pasquale and Serpina in Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona — both Oper Frankfurt productions. To stage these two operas, the cast and crew had to adapt the productions to the new reality of strict COVID safety protocols. Osborne performed the two-person La Serva Padrona with her partner, bass-baritone Gordon Bintner. They will visit the School of Music on April 14th, 2021 for Singer Behind the Song.
Singer-songwriter Nat Jay (Minor’04) launched Scratch Spin Music: Empowering Artists to DIY, an educational platform that helps musicians to navigate the music business. The platform will offer a combination of free daily educational content via Instagram and online courses for people who want to dive deeper into certain topics. The goal is to “inspire artists to take ownership of their own careers.” This fall, Nat also received FACTOR’s Juried Sound Recording grant and will soon head back into the studio to record her next album.
Opera alumnus Adam Da Ros (BSc’10, DAcc’12, BMus’13, MMus’15) was recently appointed adjunct instructor and director of the Opera Workshop at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for the 2020-21 academic year. This comes after spending two years as Resident Artist stage director at the Minnesota Opera, where Adam assisted on eight mainstage productions while directing members of the Resident Artist Program in promotional and outreach activities, including a February 2020 staged recital of American opera excerpts at the National Opera Center in New York City. Adam has also recently served on the directing staff of the Des Moines Metro Opera and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity’s Opera in the 21st Century program.
During the lockdown, Little Chamber Music launched Isolation Commissions, which supports front line artists and fosters musical reflections on the pandemic. Many UBC Music alumni were commissioned, including Mark Takeshi McGregor (BMus’95, DMA’12), Robyn Jacob (BMus’11), Elisa Thorn (BMus’11), Leslie Dala (MMus’96), Nicole Linaksita (BSc/BMus 2016), Thomas Beckman (MMus’16), Tawnya Popoff (BMus’87), Vivian Chen (BMus’15, MMus’17), Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa (DMA’07), John Korsrud (BMus’89), Stephen Smith (DMA’94), John Oliver (BMus’82), Cameron Wilson (BMus’88), Colin MacDonald (BMus’93), Evelyn Creaser-Rumley (BMus’79), Dory Hayley (BMus’01), Heather Pawsey (BMus’86), Martin Fisk (BMus’02), Ken Cormier (BMus’93), Liam Hockley (MMus’13, DMA’19), Julia Chien (BMus’14, MMus’19), Laurence Mollerup (BMus’95), Ellen Marple (BMus’08, MMus’10), Jeremy Vint (BMus’06, MMus’14), Malcolm Aiken (BMus’04, MMus’14), Elysian Trio featuring Sarah Kwok (MMus’11, DMA’18), Paul Hung (BMus’13, MMus’15), and the Quarantettes.
Trumpeter and composer Silas Friesen (MMus’19) has written and recorded two jazz orchestra tunes, both during the COVID-19 pandemic: “The Waking” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”
Composer and conductor Jaelem Bhate (BMus’17, MMus’19) launched Symphony 21, a new Vancouver-based orchestra committed to performing works by contemporary and lesser-known historical composers. These so far have included Canadian Ann Southam and Briton Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who, as a woman and as a Black man in an industry dominated by white men, have not received the kind of critical acclaim their work deserves. Learn more about the project in Jaelem’s recent interview with the Vancouver Sun.
Opera alum Chloé Hurst (BMus’07, MMus’09) recently co-founded OperaBox, an artist-run opera company that gives “underrepresented West Coast performers the chance to develop their online profiles with professionally produced videos and sound content.” To date, OperaBox has produced 25-plus videos. They have teamed up with conductor Valery Saul (MMus’09) to produce excerpts from Puccini’s La Bohème and, with Valery and musicians from Portland and Seattle, “Messiah Favourites” — in time for the holidays. “Messiah Favourites” features solos by Chloé, Aaron Durand (BMus’10, MMus’12) and Bahareh Poureslami (BMus’13).
Devon Joiner
This fall, pianist and doctor-in-training Devon Joiner (BMus’10) received Nanaimo’s 2020 Culture and Heritage Award for Excellence in Culture, which recognizes artists from the city “who have demonstrated excellence in their field and are a significant inspiration to others.” Joiner, who grew up in Nanaimo, attended UBC School of Music and Julliard, and is now studying opthalmology at Columbia University, plans to pursue careers in both music and medicine when he graduates.
Violinist and music educator Anita Lee (BMus’12, MMus’14) recently obtained her Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education with a focus on the Arts in Education with an entrepreneurial path. She was appointed faculty member at the Tianjin Juilliard School, where she hopes to provide more access to music learning both inside and outside the classroom.
