Tenor Spencer Britten (MMus’17) was featured as an opening soloist in Against the Grain Theatre’s Messiah/Complex, a bold cross-Canada performance of Handel’s Messiah created in partnership with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. A timeless piece of music with a distinctly Canadian twist, Messiah/Complex is performed in Arabic, Dene, English, French, Inuktitut, and Southern Tutchone, showcasing a diverse cast of soloists and choirs from every province and territory across Canada. The project aims to highlight Indigenous and underrepresented voices and to reclaim languages and cultures erased by colonialism. The project has touched hearts across North America, with rave reviews from the New York Times, Globe and Mail, Los Angeles Times, Maclean’s Magazine and Opera Canada.
During the lockdown, Roydon Tse (BMus’13) was hard at work setting Chinese poetry to music. The resulting piece, Yellow Crane Tower for orchestra, chorus, and voices, was the winner of the 2020 iSing! Young Artist’s International Composition Competition. It was premiered in Suzhou’s Grand Theatre by the Suzhou Symphony Orchestra, China National Orchestra Chorus, tenor Artem Tarashenko and baritone Zhong Zheng Zhou, led by Maestro Lin Daye. The full concert was recorded and aired on Chinese television and online platforms in February 2021.
Pianist Lucas Wong (BMus’04) recently launched a virtual piano app and other diction-related tools on the App Store. His web-based invention 4D Piano is the world’s first fully equipped browser app piano that enables high quality self-, peer-, and remote-accompaniment with low latency. It has already garnered interest from several hundred subscribers and half a dozen schools (including the Royal Conservatory of Music and University of Illinois-Champagne Urbana), and been ranked among the top 10 music apps in the Canada App Store.
Pianist and conductor Leslie Dala (MMus’96) recorded twenty études for the Complete Études of Philip Glass on the Redshift Label, as a kind of personal meditation and soundtrack for the unforgettable year of 2020. “There is something about the music of Glass that defies our expectations, particularly when it comes to time and inevitability. The fluidity of this music is an instantly recognizable trademark of Glass’s works and his unapologetic embracing of triads and tonality have set him apart from most other composers of his generation,” says Dala.
Baritone Luka Kawabata (MMus’20) and pianist Amy Seulky Lee (BMus’13) — both participants of the Yulanda M. Faris Young Artist Program — performed in Vancouver Opera’s production Canadian premiere of The Music Shop by Richard Wargo in March.
Composer Alexina Louie (BMus’70) received a 2021 JUNO nomination for her new work Take The Dog Sled, in the category of Classical Composition of the Year.
This year, pianist Deborah Grimmett (BMus’08) released her debut solo album Lineage: Tracing Influence, featuring premiere recordings of Piano Sonata (Voyage) by Iranian-Canadian composer Iman Habibi (BMus’08, MMus’10) and Gaelic Fantasy by Irish composer Rhoda Coghill, alongside works by Brahms, Debussy, and Respighi. The album is available on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, and other major digital streaming platforms.
Last year in October, Grimmett and Habibi were invited by the Berkeley Symphony to play in their Joseph Young & Friends: Made in Berkeley series. In November, they performed for The Heinz Awards, honouring Gabriela Lena Frank as this year’s recipient of the prestigious Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities category.
Sparks & Wiry Cries presented the 5th annual 2021 NYC songSLAM festival, commissioning and premiering two new art songs as part of the festival. Pianist Erika Switzer (BMus’97, MMus’00), who is part of the organization, performed in the work Ramadan 20 vs. Covid 19 by acclaimed poet Jessica Care Moore and composer Andrew Staniland, which explores the relationship between life, faith, race, and death.
Conductor Janna Sailor (MMus ’08, DMPS ’12) and the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra were featured in the Feb-March issue of La Scena Musicale.
Clarinetist Charles Dallaire (MMus’83) is happy to have returned to Canada after years of living, teaching and travelling throughout Asia, Australia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and performing with orchestras in Melbourne, Budapest and Kuwait. Upon returning, he joined the Orchestre d’harmonie Leonardo da Vinci, a wind symphonic ensemble based in Montreal.
Violist Newsha Khalaj (BMus’12) was featured on Nadia Sirota’s Living Music series, where she performed as part of the Slow New Wave ensemble, premiering a work by Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry. She also created a mix titled Deep Minimalism (I) for the instrumental album review website, A Closer Listen.
Bassoonist and teacher Nadina Mackie Jackson has received wonderful reviews for her book: Chromatics, Chords & Scales – Concepts for the Committed Bassoonist, which was on the publisher’s bestseller list for four weeks. In December 2020, Nadina’s Vivaldi Vol I album was named Best Classical Album of 2020 by Just Plain Folks, and she also won a Founders Award for Instrumentalist of the Year. In January 2021, she was a judge at the prestigious Meg Quigley Vivaldi Competition and led an online reed-making workshop.
Soprano Teiya Kasahara (BMus’07) was featured in a live discussion and Q&A on Gender and Opera by Canadian Opera, as part of a panel of Canadian artists who regularly confront the question of how gender constructs affect those working in opera, the art form itself, and beyond.
Robyn McCorquodale (BMus’92) released a new song and music video: “We Fly Together or We Don’t Fly at All” to honour seniors and celebrate health care workers and medical first responders. The song was inspired by her journey as a primary caregiver to her parents, but took on expanded significance with the evolution of the pandemic.
Pianist Barbara Pritchard (BMus’83) is co-hosting the podcast New Musings On New Music with cellist Norm Adams, exploring fascinating ideas and demystifying the wild and wonderful world of contemporary music. They started the podcast as a response to the pandemic, and have done 15 episodes so far.
John Trotter (BMus’98), Artistic Director of Chicago a cappella has launched HerVoice: the Emerging Women Composer Competition, which is not only a competition but a mentorship opportunity for participants to work with acclaimed composer Stacy Garrop. He also curated a listening club as part of Chicago a cappella’s virtual season.
Brian Garbet (MMus’13) graduated with a Ph.D. in Composition from the University of Calgary in November 2020. His thesis composition, Manifest, recently premiered online, and will be mixed and published in the near future.
UBC Opera alumnus Joel Klein (BMus’02) recently took on the role of general manager at the Association for Opera in Canada (AOC). Having worked extensively in contemporary dance and queer performance, Joel maintained a foothold in opera and music theatre, working with AOC to develop their international business development strategy in 2019. He is excited to return to his ‘home’ art form, and will be coordinating the pilot phase of the Opera Civic Impact Digital Platform Project at AOC.
