Alexina Louie
Legendary Canadian composer and School of Music alumnus Alexina Louie (BMus’70) was awarded the 2020 Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, in recognition of her groundbreaking orchestral and chamber works, film scores, and more. As the Canadian Music Centre notes, “Her distinctive style — a blend of Asian and Western influences — draws from a wide spectrum of sources, from her Chinese heritage to her theoretical and performance studies. Though she is a thoroughly Canadian composer, her musical voice is heard, recognized and acclaimed around the world.” In February, Louie returned to the School of Music for a composer residency, during which the UBC Symphony Orchestra performed her The Ringing Earth: Festive Overture at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts.
Composer Jared Miller (BMus’10) received a 2020 Juno nomination in the category of Classical Composition of the Year for his album Under Sea, Above Sky. The work is an ode to our planet, representing “both Earth’s massive, majestic and wild side, and its incredibly fragility, as climate change continues to wreak havoc upon it.” Under Sea, Above Sky was commissioned and recorded by the National Youth Orchestra of Canada with support from the SOCAN Foundation in 2019.
Morna Edmundson (BMus’81), the artistic director of the Elektra Women’s Choir (EWC), teamed up with conductor/harpsichordist/School of Music lecturer Alexander Weimann to create Women of the Italian Baroque, a joint EWC and Pacific Baroque Orchestra concert that showcases seven brilliant, little-known female composers from Baroque-era Italy.
Cris Derksen
Cellist Cris Derksen (BMus’07) collaborated with Toronto playwright Evalyn Parry and Inuk artist Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory on Kiinalik: These Sharp Tools, an exciting new multimedia project that combines music, art, and Greenlandic mask dancing to address colonialism and sexuality, climate change, racism, reconciliation, and the plight of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. Derksen performed the show’s live soundtrack.
In February, renowned mezzo-soprano Judith Forst (BMus’64) received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Canadian Actors Equity Association for her over 50-year career on the opera stage.
Carter Johnson (BMus’18) and Nicole Linaksita (BSc, BMus’16) have been named finalists at the 2020 Shean Piano Competition. Open to amateur musicians between the ages of 15 and 28, the winner of the competition will have the opportunity to perform with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. The finals take place later this year.
Spencer Britten (BMus’15, MMus’17) recently performed with the Teatro Lirico di Caglari, Opera Municipal de Santiago de Chile, the Bregenzer Festpiele, and the Cincinnati Symphony. He is currently enrolled in Montreal Opera’s L’Atelier Lyrique young artists program and begins a Young Artists’ residence with the Staatsoper Unter Den Linden (Staatsoper Berlin) in September.
Conductor Janna Sailor (MMus ’08, DMPS ’12) and violinist Donovan Seidle brought together members of the Calgary Philharmonic and Edmonton Symphony orchestras to film an ambitious virtual performance of Elgar’s “Variation IX (Nimrod)” from the Enigma Variations, with the goal to bring beautiful music to self-isolating audiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Stefan Sunandan Honisch (MMus’07 (piano), MMus’08 (composition), PhD’18 (Education) published “Singing Tone: Disability and Pianistic Voices” in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies. Dr. Sunandan is a School of Music alumnus and a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow in UBC’s Department of Theatre and Film.
Bass baritone Neil Craighead (BMus’09) sang the role of Minsksman in Pacific Opera Victoria’s February production of Flight.
Simone Osborne (DMPS’09) starred as Gretel in the Canadian Opera Company’s recent production of Hansel and Gretel. A modern take on the Humperdinck and Wette opera, the production sets the action in a Toronto apartment complex instead of a gingerbread house in a German forest. Simone also performed the role of Vreli in A Village Romeo and Juliet with Opera Frankfurt.
Rachel Fenlon
In January, Berlin-based soprano and pianist Rachel Fenlon (BMus’10, MMus’12) staged Fenlon & Fenlon, a solo performance at Victoria’s Baumann Centre that plays with the traditional operatic recital format. The repertoire includes Benjamin Britten’s On This Island and George Crumb’s Apparition, song cycles written for two musicians, which Fenlon performed solo, singing the operatic parts and playing piano.
As part of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s New Music Festival, composer and flutist Jennifer Butler (MMus’02, DMA’09) reworked and expanded Olivier Messiaen’s 20th century work for flute and piano, Le Merle Noir. Her “recomposition” was performed by Vancouver ensemble Standing Wave at the festival in January.
With collaborators Nancy Tam and Josh Hite, pianist/vocalist Robyn Jacob (BMus’11) created and staged Double Happiness: Detour This Way, a multimedia performance that explores the complexities of the Chinese diaspora “by tracing migration paths of two families, connecting both shores of the Pacific.” The show launched in March as part of the Music on Main concert series.
Robyn Jacob and harpist/vocalist Elisa Thorn (BMus’11) recently formed the duo The Giving Shapes, which blends their classical training and unique songwriting sensibilities to create new, genre-hopping music. They released their debut album, Earth Leaps Up, on Elsewhere Records.
In February, Francesca Corrado (BMus’12, MMus’14) performed in Opera By Request’s Toronto production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring Cycle).
Simone McIntosh (BMus’14) and Anne-Marie MacIntosh (BMus’12) are current Adler Fellows at the San Francisco Opera, while Kallie Clayton (MMus’17), Eden Tremayne (BMus’12, MMus’14) and Scott Rumble (MMus’18) are current members of Calgary Opera’s Emerging Artists Program.
Composer Alfredo Santa Ana (MMus’05, DMA’10) released a video for “Notgnirrac,” a composition inspired by the work of surrealist Leonara Carrington. Shot at the Museo Leonora Carrington in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, the video features flutist Mark Takeshi McGregor (BMus’95, DMA’12).
Soprano Teiya Kasahara (BMus’07) is busy juggling many artistic hats — directing, writing and performing. They recently launched their new company, Amplified Opera, to create new works for underrepresented voices in opera. They are working on the full-length world premiere of their groundbreaking new play, The Queen in Me, which tears down outdated tropes and social issues in opera. It will premiere sometime in 2020. They appeared as Cio-Cio San in a concert production of Madama Butterfly with the Windsor Symphony Orchestra in January. Teiya is featured in our latest High Notes issue. Read more about their extraordinary career journey and wildly creative projects.
Baritone Justin Welsh (BMus’02 , MMus’04) took the stage last fall in Calgary Opera’s Amahl and the Night Visitors. Most recently he sang the role of the Immigration Officer in Pacific Opera Victoria’s Flight.
