Composers
Carmen Braden
Work Title: Strange Touch Voicing(s): SA • SATB • TB + piano Score release date: January 1, 2021 See perusal scores here. |
Carmen Braden is an emerging force in the world of new music, hailing proudly from Yellowknife NWT. As a performer, Carmen is “growing into the role of acoustic ambassador of the Canadian Subarctic” (Musicworks). She has played intimate theatres and MainStage folk festivals. Her contemporary classical compositions are nationally recognized, with commissions and performances by world class ensembles and performers including the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, James Ehnes and the Canadian Chamber Choir. She released her second album Songs of the Invisible Summer Stars in 2019, her first album Ravens in 2017. She won the Western Canadian Music Award for Classical Composer of the Year, and has nominations for ECMA Classical Album of the Year (2020), WCMA Classical Artist of the Year (2019), and WCMA Classical Composition of the Year (2017). Carmen has been called “a talented, bold musician” (Up Here Magazine). About her latest album: “Braden’s music is clear, and it is bright...this recording is captured psychogeography.” (Whole Note); and her songwriting: is “quirky and clever...à la Joni Mitchell” (The WholeNote). As an educator, Carmen regularly gives workshops, individual instruction, guest lectures and collaboration facilitation ranging from elementary-level to university graduate level.
www.carmenbraden.com |
Deanna Edwards (Gestrin)
Work Title: One Place For Now Voicing(s): SA • SSA • SAT • SAB • SATB TTB • TBB + accompaniment (track provided) Score release date: October 1, 2020 See perusal scores here. |
Deanna Edwards (Gestrin) is a vocalist, choral conductor, clinician, composer, and secondary music educator with the Burnaby School District on the West Coast of Canada. She has taught for the past twenty-three years in various musical settings, including private vocal instruction, early childhood music, elementary classroom music, secondary choral and band conducting, as well as directing adult and children's community choirs. Deanna trained with numerous choirs and private voice instructors during her youth. While obtaining her degrees in professional music, jazz studies and secondary education, she sang in Phil Mattson’s vocal group, Voices Iowa, NiteCap at Capilano University, and in various University choral ensembles. She has taught music at Kwantlan University, at the Native Education College, and has sung on various albums and television and film projects. In addition to Secondary music teaching, Deanna works as an adjudicator, choral clinician, and she directs children’s choirs at Coastal Sound Music Academy. After several years composing for her own groups, Deanna has recently began writing commissions and making her work available to other ensembles. Deanna’s compositions explore meaningful topics such as relationships, life experiences, and personal expression. As a mixed heritage member of the St’atl’imx First Nation, Deanna is also interested in exploring how traditional and contemporary choral music traditions overlap and connect with First Nations cultural knowledge and experience.
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Jeff Enns
Work Title: Darkness Voicing(s): SA + piano Score release date: December 1, 2020 See perusal scores here. |
Jeff Enns is a composer, organist, choir director, singer and teacher based in Elmira, ON. He has been commissioned by choirs across North America and New Zealand. His works have been performed across North America, much of Europe, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Dubai. He has written for choirs of all levels and voicing, from unison children's choirs to 8-part (or more) professional ensembles. www.jeffenns.com |
Katerina Gimon
Work Title: A Path to Hope Voicing(s): SSA • SATB • TBB Score release date: October 1, 2020 See perusal scores here. |
Named as one of Canada's ‘hot 30 classical musicians under 30’ by the Canadian Broadcasting Company; composer, improviser, and vocalist Katerina Gimon's uniquely dynamic, poignant, and eclectic compositional style is rapidly gaining her a reputation as one of the most distinctive emerging voices in contemporary Canadian composition and beyond. Katerina’s music has been described as “sheer radiance” (Campbell River Mirror), “imbued…with human emotion” (San Diego Story), and capable of taking listeners on a “fascinating journey of textural discovery” (Ludwig Van). Her music draws inspiration from myriad of influences — from Eastern European folk music to indie rock, as well as from her roots as a songwriter. Her works have been performed across Canada, the United States, Europe, Asia, and Oceania at prominent events such as ACDA Conferences and Choral Canada’s Podium Conferences. She is currently the composer-in-residence for female vocal ensemble Myriad as well as the Canadian Men's Chorus. www.katerinagimon.com |
Laura Hawley
Work Title: No one asked me Voicing(s): SAA • SATB • TTBB + piano Score release date: November 1, 2020 See perusal scores here. |
Laura Hawley’s music, often influenced by creative community connections and exchanges, has been described in The WholeNote as conjuring “the forces of nature and its effect on the human spirit.” Laura has been steeped in choral art since childhood, and her output demonstrates her stylistic versatility and craft in writing for all artists from the developing chorister’s voice to the professional choral ensemble. Her works have been commissioned, performed, and recorded by many fine choirs including Canadian Chamber Choir, Pro Coro Canada, Elektra Women’s Choir, Vancouver Youth Choir, Cantiamo Choirs, and Toronto Children’s Chorus. Her music became internationally famous overnight when her piece, Alhamdoulilah, went viral on YouTube with the title “Welcome to Canada Syrian Refugees” in December 2014. As well as being a composer, Laura is also a highly regarded conductor and educator, and directs various treble and mixed choirs as well as teaching theory and composition at the university level. www.laurahawley.ca |
Ryan Henwood
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Ryan Henwood is a Halifax-based composer, conductor, arts administrator and choral singer. Ryan graduated from Dalhousie University with a Bachelor of Music in Composition in the Spring of 2017. After graduating, Ryan competed in the 8th International Antonín Dvořák Composition Competition, where he received the special prize for Best Religious Vocal Piece. In the spring of 2018, Ryan also placed second for his composition, Pulse, in the Eastern Horizon Composition Competition. The following winter, Ryan was commissioned by Eastern Horizon to complete 5 new choral works. Ryan is currently the principal conductor of Choirs for Change’s Polaris, a community choir with a focus on social change. In addition to conducting Polaris, Ryan is also the assistant conductor of the Halifax Gay Men’s Chorus and an active choral singer singing with the Halifax Camerata Singers and Choirs for Change’s Eastern Horizon.
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Shane Raman
Work Title: Where is my voice? Voicing(s): SATB Score release date: November 1, 2020 See perusal scores here. |
Shane Raman is a baritone, choral conductor, composer and music educator in Vancouver British Columbia. Shane teaches private voice and conducts choirs at the Sarah McLachlan School of Music and the Vancouver Bach Youth Chorus and Sarabande. He also sings with the queer choir Cor Flammae. After earning a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance from The University of British Columbia, Shane was a member of juno-nominated professional vocal ensemble, musica intima, for ten seasons. Shane has also performed with Vancouver Cantata Singers, Vancouver Opera, and the Vancouver Peace Choir.
Writing and creating music is a growing artery of Shane’s career. Most recently, he wrote the score for a yet to be released dramatic musical short film, entitled, Looking Back. His arrangements and original compositions have been performed by Vancouver Cantata Singers, musica intima, Cor Flammae, Pro Coro Canada, Vancouver Bach Youth Chorus and Sarabande, Indiekör, Sarah McLachlan and the Sarah McLachlan School of Music Choirs, McGill Choral Society Chamber Choir and The Vancouver Pride Society. The following album recordings include some of Shane’s pieces: UBC’s University Singers recording A Vancouver Christmas (2003), Vancouver Cantata Singers’ A Christmas Reprise: 10th Anniversary Album (2012), musica intima’s EP, song for a winter’s night (2018). Video recordings of Shane’s pieces can be found on the YouTube pages of musica intima, Cor Flammae’s and Vancouver Cantata Singers' bandcamp page. |
Marie-Claire Saindon
Work Title: Common Silence Voicing(s): SA(A) • SATB • TB(B) Score release date: February 1, 2021 See perusal scores here. |
Marie-Claire Saindon is a Franco-Ontarian composer based in Montréal. She began creating in high school, where she wrote and produced her first musical. She continued to participate in many collaborations, from choral pieces, to scoring short films and full-length documentaries, to accompanying dancers, to fiddling in a team of folk musicians on a historical steam train. Marie-Claire holds a BMus: Composition from the Schulich School of Music (McGill, 2007) and an MMus: Composition - Film and Multimedia music from Université de Montréal (2010). Marie-Claire is composer-in-residence for Choeur Adleisia, runs creative choral/vocal composition workshops for youth and adults, and enjoys teaching Irish fiddle. Recipient of multiple composition prizes (such as the SOCAN Young Composers' National Awards in the vocal category, 2013, and the Ruth Watson Henderson Choral Composition Competition, 2018), her choral works are published with Boosey & Hawkes, Cypress Choral Music, Earthsongs Choral Music, Hal Leonard Choral, and Alliance Music Publications.
www.marieclairesaindon.com |
Ben Sellick
Work Title: The Tide Turning Voicing(s): SATB Score release date: December 1, 2020 See perusal scores here. |
Ben Sellick grew up homeschooled with his two brothers, playing Grieg and Debussy, travelling, and watching Hitchcock movies. He went to the University of Manitoba and studied Film, Philosophy, and Piano Performance, with Guy Maddin, David Moroz, Michael Zaugg, and Jonathan Darlington. He is now studying composition at Juilliard with Robert Beaser. Ben is the founder and director of SOUNDYARD Composer's Circle, a Schoenberg-inspired new music society. In 2019 Ben was Pro Coro Canada's RBC Emerging Composer, and won the Francis Seaton Choral Composition Competition. In addition to concert music, Ben has composed the scores for a number of short films, and two features: Headspace (2018), and Captives (2016). When not composing, Ben works as a wildfire fighter, choir director and organist, and spends part of his summer teaching sailing in north Ontario. Ben likes the colour orange, olive oil, wool, Rachmaninoff's All-Night Vigil, lakes, prairie storms, El Greco, and podcasts.
www.bensellick.com |
Tracy Wong
Work Title: Singkap Siaga Voicing(s): SSA Score release date: February 1, 2021 See perusal scores here. |
Tracy Wong hails from Malaysia and is a choral conductor, music educator, vocalist, pianist, and composer. Currently residing in Toronto, Canada, Tracy is the Assistant Professor and Choral Director at McMaster University’s School of the Arts, and conducts the Grand Philharmonic Youth Choir in Kitchener, Ontario. Tracy holds a Doctor in Musical Arts and Master in Music Performance (Choral Conducting) degrees from the University of Toronto and is a recipient of the 2016 & 2017 Elmer Iseler National Graduate Fellowship in Choral Conducting.
Tracy was the 2019 Canadian Composer Feature for the Canadian Kodály Journal, Alla Breve. She advocates for repertoire-based music education by writing pieces that are teaching tools for singers to develop vocal technique, musicianship skills, and artistry. As part of her continued search to define her Chinese-Malaysian-Canadian identity, Tracy’s music also shows the coming-together of different languages and musical elements that continue to influence her composition writing. Tracy collaborates regularly with choral organizations in Canada and Malaysia on commissioned choral projects and her pieces are featured at numerous reading sessions. Tracy’s choral works are currently published by Cypress Choral Music (Canada) and Young Choral Academy (Malaysia) and have been performed by Malaysian, North American, European, and Southeast Asian choirs at international competitions and festivals. www.tracywongmusic.com |