SSO News

McKenzie Warriner, soprano

McKenzie Warriner is a Saskatchewan born and raised soprano bringing
music and text to life in works ranging from 17 th century opera to the
cutting-edge. In the 22/23 season, McKenzie is honoured to be a
Yulanda M. Faris Young Artist with Vancouver Opera, where she will
sing the role of Aurore in Le portrait de Manon, as well as understudy
Leïla in Les pêcheurs de perles and Tytania in A Midsummer Night’s
Dream. She is also excited to make her United Kingdom debut at the
2023 Aldeburgh Festival premiering new works as a Britten Pears
Young Artist. Recent credits include Abigail Richardson-Schulte’s
Alligator Pie with the Regina Symphony Orchestra, Bessie Brent in The
Shop Girl (COSA Canada), Madame Herz in Der Schauspieldirektor
(Eastman Opera Theatre), and Gretel in Hansel and Gretel (University
of Manitoba). Passionate about contemporary music, McKenzie co-
founded Slow Rise Music in 2021, a concert series devoted to creating
bold new vocal works. McKenzie earned her Master of Music degree
from the Eastman School of Music and her Bachelor of Music degree
from the University of Manitoba.

Brenden Friesen, bass

Saskatchewan born bass Brenden Friesen has captured audiences with his powerful resonance, exceptional diction, enormous comedic presence, and incredible interpretation of text (Opera Canada). Brenden is a recent graduate of the esteemed L’Atelier lyrique young artist program at l’Opéra de Montréal. His studies include a Bachelor of Arts in Voice Performance from  Briercrest College while studying with Dr. Ron de Jager, followed by completing University of Toronto’s MMus Opera degree while studying with Professor Lorna MacDonald. Brenden is now a current student of Ariane Girard in Montréal, Québec.

After debuting with Opéra de Montréal in 2018 with Verdi’s Rigoletto as Count Ceprano under the baton of Maestro Carlo Montanaro, he has since performed notable roles such as Colline in Puccini’s La bohème with both Saskatoon Opera (2018) and Highlands Opera Studio (2018), Ernest Hemingway in Ricky Ian Gordon’s Canadian debut of 27 (2019), Truffaldino in Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos (HOS2019), and Zaretski in Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece Eugene Onegin (Opéra de Montréal 2019). Brenden has also undertaken such roles as Sarastro in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (2018), Leporello and Il Commendatore (UofT Opera), and Masetto (Saskatoon Opera 2017) in Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

Duff Warkentin, conductor

Duff Warkentin has been a choral conductor and clinician for many years. His formal post-secondary education was at Canadian Mennonite Bible College in Winnipeg, the University of Waterloo, and the University of Regina. He has conducted children’s choirs, high school choirs, church choirs, university choirs, and community choirs. He has sung under the direction of noted conductors such as Robert Shaw, George Wiebe, Helmut Rilling, John Martens, Elmer Iseler, Wayne Riddell, Jon Washburn, and Bramwell Tovey. He has prepared and conducted many of the Requiems, Masses, oratorios, and other larger works in the standard repertoire. Two particular choral experiences stand out for him. He conducted the Station Singers of Rosthern, a non-auditioned community choir, since its inception in 2000. That choir discontinued at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and this summer the decision was made to end the choir. It was a difficult decision, arrived at after considering a number of factors. He was honoured to conduct this wonderful choir. He also conducted a Warkentin family choir at their triennial family reunion. This experience too is one that is tremendously important and meaningful to him. The commonality between these two experiences is that both groups were, and are, amateur choirs, in the truest sense of the word. Singing for the sheer love of music and singing together, creating together what we cannot create alone, recognizing that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, building community through music, through singing together – this is what inspires and energizes Duff Warkentin, and he is thrilled to be able to participate in Handel’s Messiah again!

Martin MacDonald, conductor

Martin MacDonald is one of Canada’s most dynamic and outstanding young conductors and has been awarded both the Heinz Unger Award and the Jean-Marie Beaudet Award for orchestral conducting. Martin has guest conducted extensively across Canada having worked with the orchestras of Toronto, National Arts Centre, Vancouver, Victoria, Kamloops, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Kingston, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Niagara, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Windsor, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland. He has served as a Cover and Guest Conductor for the National Ballet of Canada for several productions, and has worked with the Minnesota Ballet, Atlantic Ballet, and Halifax Dance. Martin has recorded extensively for the CBC and for several commercial recordings. Most notably, Martin has served as Resident Conductor, Associate Conductor, and a regular guest conductor of Symphony Nova Scotia since 2008 with over 200 performances in a diverse range of programs and artists. Previously, Martin served as Associate Conductor of the National Academy Orchestra of Canada, and has participated in several international conducting workshops and competitions.

Martin has a Master’s in Orchestral Conducting from McGill, a Bachelor’s in Cello from Memorial, and has studied conducting with Alexis Hauser, Bernhard Gueller, Boris Brott, Michael Jinbo, Kenneth Kiesler, Gustav Meier, Jorma Panula, and Johannes Schlaefli. Martin’s conducting activities have been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts. Cape Breton born, Martin is the youngest of twelve children and has a diverse musical background with a strong Celtic music tradition including extensive touring and performing with members of his family throughout Europe and North America.

Martin resides in Toronto, Ontario with his wife, Kristen and their daughter, Frances.

 

https://www.martinmacdonald.ca/

Judith Yan, conductor

Equally adept at conducting symphony, opera, and ballet, Judith Yan’s career has taken her internationally, conducting for major companies in Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America. She has held Staff Conductor positions at San Francisco Opera, Canadian Opera Company, and National Ballet of Canada.

Her recent debuts were celebrated with critical acclaim: “In her Vancouver Opera debut, Canadian Conductor Judith Yan really shone in the pit, bringing extraordinarily lyrical and expressive playing from the Vancouver Opera Orchestra.” (Vancouver Opera, La Boheme, Opera Canada 2018). “Under the direction of Canadian conductor Judith Yan, the West Australian Symphony Orchestra is simply wonderful.” (West Australian Ballet, Don Quixote, Greg Ross, 2018). “Judith Yan, her Seattle Opera debut, conducted the orchestra with vigour and deep sympathy for the score.” (Seattle Opera, An American Dream, Classical Voice America, 2017). “Under the baton of Judith Yan, the music just came to life.” (Kentucky Opera, Orfeo​, Arts-Louisville Reviews). “The Edmonton Symphony played splendidly under Judith Yan…coaxed many vivid, dramatically transparent moments from the players.” (Edmonton Opera, La Traviata, Opera Canada 2019).
​
While with the San Francisco Opera, she served as Staff Conductor, assistant to Maestro Sir Donald Runnicles, where her performances of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress for San Francisco Opera was included in the San Francisco Chronicle’s Top Ten Classical Performances of the Year. Prior to San Francisco Opera, she served as the first Conductor-in-Residence of the Canadian Opera Company, where she made her debut with Britten’s Rape of Lucretia. As the Principal Conductor of Opera on the Avalon since 2010, she has lead numerous productions including Ours, Shawnadithit, Tosca, La Boheme, Tosca, Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi, La Traviata, Albert Herring, and Dead Man Walking.

As a conductor of symphony, she served as the Artistic Director of Guelph Symphony Orchestra for 8 seasons, where she expanded the orchestra’s symphonic and operatic repertoire with works by composers Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky, Philip Glass, Francis Poulenc, Leonard Bernstein. Along with new works and premieres, she added operatic repertoire by Puccini, Verdi, Strauss, Humperdinck, and created the unique Triple-Feature “Symphony, Opera, and Ballet” Gala. As a guest conductor, she has collaborated with orchestras such as Auckland Philharmonia in New Zealand, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Manitoba Chamber Orchestra and Saskatoon Symphony.

As a conductor of ballet, she has conducted over 90 performances at the Four Season’s Centre for the National Ballet of Canada, working with the world’s foremost choreographers including John Neumeier, Ronald Hynd, and James Kuldelka. With National Ballet of Canada and as a guest internationally, she has conducted the ballets of Balanchine, Cranko, Aldous, Bart, Harvey, Kiliàn, Lander, Stowell, Wright, and Grigorovich. Since 2010, she has had a close association with several ballet companies, including Hong Kong Ballet, conducting the company’s production of Swan Lake as well as premiering four of the company’s productions: Cynthia Harvey’s Sleeping Beauty, Terence Kohler’s The Nutcracker, Nina Ananiashvili’s Don Quixote, and the Asian world-premiere of Anna-Marie Holme’s Le Corsaire. She conducted the Polish premiere of Cranko’s ​The Taming of the Shrew in 2015 for Polish National Ballet, at Teatr Wielki in Warsaw.
​
In 2014, she made her Seoul conducting debut with Korean National Ballet, conducting the Korean Symphony in Yury Grigorovich’s La Bayadère, returning in 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2019 to conduct Patrice Bart’s Giselle, Grigorovich’s Swan Lake, and a revival of La Bayadère. She made her Australian conducting debut in 2017 with West Australian Ballet, conducting the West Australian Symphony Orchestra in Lucette Aldous’s Don Quixote, returning in 2018 for the world-premiere of Krzysztof Pastor’s Dracula and 2019 for Greg Horsman’s La Bayadère.

Recent performances include 3 critically acclaimed world-premieres: Jack Perla’s An American Dream for Seattle Opera and John Estacio’s Ours for Opera on the Avalon, Krzysztof Pastor’s Dracula for West Australian Ballet, company debuts with National Arts Centre Orchestra for Cynthia Harvey’s Sleeping Beauty, Teatr Wielki in Warsaw for the Polish premiere of Cranko’s The Taming of the Shrew, West Australian Ballet and West Australian Symphony for Lucette Aldous’s Don Quixote, and Yury Grigorovich’s La Bayadère for Korean National Ballet and Korean Symphony.

2018/19 season included Vancouver Opera for La Boheme and Edmonton Opera for La Traviata, the season-opening gala concert for the Elora Festival, a revival of the opera Ours at Opera on the Avalon, Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8 and Beethoven’s Mass in C with Guelph Symphony Orchestra, productions of Greg Horsman’s La Bayadère and the world-première of Krzysztof Pastor’s Dracula for West Australian Ballet.

​For 2019/20, she opened both Korean National Ballet’s season with Yury Grigorovich’s Swan Lake, and Edmonton Opera’s with Verdi’s Rigoletto, ​Sleeping Beauty ​with West Australian Ballet, and concerts with Guelph Symphony Orchestra.

During the pandemic seasons of 2020/21 and 2021/22, she travelled to Hong Kong Ballet for a production of Don Quixote, made her debut with Saskatoon Symphony in programme of Sibelius, Copland, and Bernstein, and conducted a concert with Opera on the Avalon and Newfoundland Symphony. In 2021/22, she made her debut with Kentucky Opera with Orfeo, and returned to Saskatoon Symphony with a programme of Franklin and Tchaikovsky.

This 2022/23 season includes productions with Opera Omaha for Suor Angelica, New Orleans Opera for a new production of Madama Butterfly, Opera on the Avalon for Jake Heggie’s Three Decembers, San Francisco Opera (Merola) for The Rape of Lucretia, continues her collaboration with Saskatoon Symphony, opening its 92nd season with a Canadian premiere of Gipps’s Symphony No. 2, Forsyth’s Viola Concerto, and a world-premiere SSO commission of Canadian composer, Christos Hatzis. She returns to Saskatoon in November for a programme of De Falla and Ravel, and again in 2023 for a concert of Copland and Wagner.

Also in the 22/23 season is the much anticipated world-premiere of Laura Kaminsky and Lisa Moore’s February for Opera on the Avalon.

Judith is fluent in English and Cantonese. She is a Canadian citizen and American Resident, eligible to work in USA, Canada, and Hong Kong.

https://judithyan.com/

Angela Cheng, pianist

Consistently praised for her brilliant technique, tonal beauty, and superb musicianship, Canadian pianist Angela Cheng is one of her country’s national treasures. In addition to regular guest appearances with virtually every orchestra in Canada, she has performed with the symphonies of Saint Louis, Houston, Indianapolis, Colorado, Utah, San Diego and Jacksonville, as well as the philharmonic orchestras of Buffalo, Louisiana, Rhode Island, London, Israel and Minas Gerais in Brazil.

Recent performances include a debut with the Fort Worth Symphony, performing Rachmaninoff’s “Variations on a Theme of Paganini,” under the baton of Robert Spano, and a return to the Vancouver Symphony, performing Ravel’s Concerto in G with Otto Tausk. Next season will include the Boulder Philharmonic, Newfoundland Symphony, Okanagan Symphony, Saskatoon Symphony, Saguenay Symphony and the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas.

Angela Cheng has performed recitals and concertos at Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center/Washington, D.C., the 92nd Street Y/New York and Wigmore Hall in London. As a member of the Zukerman Trio and Chamber Players, she has also appeared at the Musikverein/Vienna, the Concertgebouw/Amsterdam, Teatro Colon/Buenos Aires, Mariinsky Concert Hall/St. Petersburg and the Sydney Opera House. Festival appearances include Verbier, Edinburgh, Miyazaki, Stars of the White Nights/St. Petersburg and the George Enescu Festival in Romania.

Angela Cheng also appears regularly on recital series throughout the United States and Canada and has collaborated with the Takács, Colorado, and Vogler quartets. North American festival performances include Banff, Chautauqua, Colorado, Great Lakes Chamber Music, Vancouver, Toronto and the Festival International de Lanaudière in Quebec.

Ms. Cheng has been invited to give masterclasses throughout North America and in Asia, including the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts, Taichung University in Taiwan, Indiana University, University of Michigan and the University of Texas. She has also served on the jury of many competitions, including the Cleveland International Piano Competition, Esther Honens International Piano Competition, Montreal International Piano Competition, and the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition, among others.

Angela Cheng has been Gold Medalist of the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Masters Competition, as well as the first Canadian to win the prestigious Montreal International Piano Competition. Other awards include the Canada Council’s coveted Career Development Grant and the Medal of Excellence for outstanding interpretations of Mozart from the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria.
PLEASE DISCARD ALL PREVIOUS BIOGRAPHIES (April 2022)

A native of Hong Kong, Ms. Cheng studied extensively with Menahem Pressler at Indiana University and with Sascha Gorodnitzki at The Juilliard School. She is currently on the artist faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where she was honored with the 2011-12 Excellence in Teaching Award.

www.pianistangelacheng.com

“Cheng unspooled songlike melodies with melting lyricism, flew through rhapsodic flourishes with sparkling clarity, and unleashed fiery sounds when needed. In playful passages, she relished off-beat accents and ‘wrong’ notes. She also paid close attention to the orchestra, which skillfully complemented her style [Rachmaninoff Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini].”
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS

Costume Ideas

Looking for some last-minute costume ideas?

Here are a few ideas we thought you might like!

Bach

Need a powdered wig in a pinch for your composer costume? Try using some printer paper!

Wear a black coat and pants with a white top, and carry some sheet music. Just keep telling people “you’ll be Bach” for the extra pun factor.

 

Looking for other composer costume inspiration? Check out @NormalComposers on Twitter!

Leonard Bernstein partying with Patti Smith.
Béla Bartók having a miserable time with some lady friends.

Record

Want to set the record straight? Dress up as some vinyl for Halloween!

Once you have your cardboard box: Cut 2 large circles from the cardboard box. Spray paint both sides of the circles with black spray paint and let dry completely. While this dries, print out 2 copies of the record label template provided. Cut out the label and glue it to the center of the black cardboard circles. To create shoulder and chest straps, measure the length needed and place 2 strips of duct tape sticky side together. Tape to the cardboard front and back, so you can easily slip it over your head. *Optional: use the paint pen to draw on record grooves.

Here’s the template.

 

SSO Musician

Have a favourite member of the orchestra? Put on your concert-worthy outfit and fashion yourself after one of our musicians!

Or, if you know them outside the orchestra you could dress up like they do when not on the stage.

A few years ago, principal bassoon Stephanie Unverricht dressed up as our principal oboe Erin Brophey (who was pregnant at the time)!

 

Pick a great song title and dress up according to the title.

The Devil with a Blue Dress is an easy one to do! Some horns and a pitchfork, plus a blue dress and you’re ready to go.

 

If you’re really in a pinch try this random costume generator:

Can’t wait to see those musically minded costumes!

The renaissance of Marianna Martines

They say that brilliant minds touch the lives of all that surround them. This was especially true for Vienna-born composer Marianna Martines (sometimes referred to as Marianne von Martinez). Marianna was born in 1744 into a family of career soldiers. Her father Nicolo, who had grown up in Naples, served in Vienna as major-domo to the papal nuncio (the Pope’s embassy to the Austrian Empire). 

Marianna’s brothers both led distinguished military careers and, for their service to the Empire, their entire family was awarded a patent of nobility in 1774 (back then, you couldn’t have “von” in your  family name without this handy slip of paper). But Marianna (with her musical gifts both as a performer and composer) was the rising star of the family, and with the help of a family friend she would one day become a sensation throughout all of Europe.

During Marianna’s childhood, The Martines family lived in a large building on the Michaelerplatz in Vienna. Described by historians as “a stately building still standing in the Kohlmarkt”, the complex was arranged by the social class of its occupants: upper class members of society held soirees in palatial rooms on the bottom floors, while the lower classes lived in the cramped interiors of the building’s uppermost reaches. As an upper-middle class family, the Martines clan were privileged enough to live on the third floor. 

The neighbors of Marianna Martines included the dowager princess of the wealthy Esterházy family (1st Floor), the well-known Italian singing teacher and composer Nicola Porpora (who lived a few floors above Marianna), and Joseph Haydn (then a struggling composer and freelance musician who lived in the building’s attic). The figure who helped unite all these neighbors into a network of musical support for Marianna’s development was her father’s childhood friend Pietro Trapassi. Writing under the famous pen name “Metastasio”, Pietro lived with the Martines family for the rest of his life after being appointed Poet Laureate to the Austrian Empire in 1730. 

As the tutor responsible for Marianna’s practical and musical education in childhood, Pietro ensured that the education Marianna received was of a quality far superior to that of the “standard” provided to women of her social class at that time. Through her rigorous study of languages with Pietro, for example, Marianna became an incredibly well-versed quadrilingual of French, English, Italian, and German. Pietro arranged for Marianna to take keyboard lessons from Haydn (that brilliant young man from the attic) and encouraged her to take singing lessons at the age of ten. 

So it was that Marianna continued her musical training under Nicola Porpora, with Haydn serving as both her accompanist and assistant to her new teacher. Demonstrating potential as a gifted composer, Marianna was encouraged by her tutor Pietro to take lessons in composition from Johann Adolph Hasse and the Imperial court composer Giuseppe Bonno. She brought Haydn with her to meet both Hasse and Bonno, and the attic musician’s career flourished as a result.

Martines was a virtuosic player, even as a child, and regularly performed before the Imperial court. Her biographer Helene Wessely depicts the young Martines as having “attracted attention with her beautiful voice and [superb] keyboard playing”. Wessely also asserts that her compositions, particularly for voice, possess a “predilection for coloratura passages, leaps over wide intervals and trills indicat[ing] that she herself must have been an excellent singer.” As a rock star on the harpsichord, she developed such a reputation into adulthood that she was frequently requested to perform before the Empress Maria Theresa.

Despite being one of the most eligible bachelorettes in the Classical Viennese music scene, Marianna Martines never married. She never sought an appointed position at court either. There were barriers to women (as well as individuals of her social class) when it came to pursuing compositional employment that her friend Haydn simply did not have to contend with. Together with her sister (who also remained a lifelong bachelorette) she cared for her mentor Pietro until his death in 1782. That very year, Marianna’s Italian oratorio “Isacco figura del redentore” was premiered in a renowned concert series put on by the Tonkünstler-Societät. The librettist for this oratorio is credited to Pietro’s pen name of Metastasio.

The poet left his estate to the Martines family, and to his student Marianna he bequeathed 20,000 florins, his harpsichord, and his entire music library. Marianna used this money to fill the Martines home with her former tutor’s favorite music, hosting musical soirees with her sister that attracted distinguished guests (such as the Irish tenor Michael Kelly and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart himself!). The latter was a frequent guest to these musical get-togethers and composed four-hand piano sonatas to perform with Marianne. Never too proud to forget his roots, Haydn would often pop in for a bit of harpsichord-tickling and merriment-making.

As a composer, Martines penned four masses, six motets, and three litanies for choir. She composed several works for solo voice and wrote several secular cantatas (as well as two oratorios) to Italian texts. In the definitive fashion of the early Classical period, particularly in Vienna, she composed in the Italian style. Her harpsichord playing was compared stylistically to that of C.P.E. Bach, and her compositions were so well-regarded that some scholars suggest Mozart modeled his 1768 Mass after the “Christe” of her Mass No. 1 in D major. 

As she rightly deserved, Martines’ name and music were lauded throughout Europe, but after her death in 1812 her musical legacy faced an incredible amount of erasure. It is only in recent years that her music has, rightly, been unearthed to the delight of the musical world. It is primarily thanks to the efforts made by publishers such as “Furore-Verlag” (a German publisher that specializes in works by female composers) that we can enjoy so many of her compositions today. 

Allison Miller, flute

Allison Miller, Saskatoon-born flutist, is thrilled to have joined the SSO in 2019. Having received tenure in 2020, Allison now holds the Randi Nelson Chair of Principal Flute with the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra. In her short time with the SSO, Allison has been a highly featured musician, regularly presenting concerti and solo works for flute and orchestra. These works include Bach’s Brandenburg Concerti numbers 2 and 5, Vivaldi’s Concerto in F Major, Devienne’s Concerto for Flute and Orchestra, Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, and Sommers’ Picasso Suite.

Allison is thrilled to appear as guest soloist for the premier of Up to Her Waist in Lupins by Canadian Composer Christos Hatzis. This featured performance is scheduled for Fall 2022 in memory of the SSO’s beloved Principal Flute Emerita, Randi Nelson.

Allison completed a Diploma in Music at the Victoria Conservatory of Music, studying with Richard Volet. She went on to complete both a Bachelor of Music and a Master of Music, specializing in Music Performance, at the University of Ottawa, studying with Camille Churchfield.

Allison has appeared numerous times as both a flutist and piccoloist across Canada, including consistent appearances with the Victoria Symphony Orchestra since 2017. Allison was invited to participate in the 2022 Beethoven Festival under the baton of international conductor, Maestro Christian Kluxen. Throughout this festival, Allison performed in all 9 Beethoven symphonies, including sitting as guest principal for the celebratory 9th symphony.

Allison is the Sessional Lecturer in Flute at the University of Saskatchewan, Department of Music. Allison has also served as a Woodwind Sectional Instructor for the Saskatoon Youth Orchestra and frequently presents guest master classes for the Saskatchewan Band Association. In her teaching, Allison encourages both physical and mental health, a sense of community rather than competition, and a focused and efficient method of practice. Allison has been recognized for her passion and dedication to teaching, for which she has received the RCM Gold Medal award as a distinguished flute teacher. Her students perform at local festivals and have been accepted to artistic schools such as Ottawa’s Canterbury High School. They have performed in Canada’s many musical venues, including Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music. Outside of the U of S, Allison maintains a private studio of highly advanced high school students.

Allison strongly believes that orchestral musicians should be active in their orchestral community off the stage as well as on it. To this end, she is an active member on numerous orchestral committees, including the Occupational Health and Safety Committee, the Players Committee, and the Code of Conduct Committee.

Allison is a three-time NYO Canada alum and has participated in international tours to Portugal, Germany, and Scotland, as well as the Canadian Edges of Canada coast-to-coast tour. Allison spent three summers studying with William Bennet (WIBB) and Lorna McGhee at the PIFR international festival, off the coast of Vancouver. She has also attended the Domaine Forget International Music Academy and the Orford Music Academy.

Allison has been the recipient of numerous awards and scholarships, receiving The Payne-Lyon Prize for Excellence in Flute from NYO Canada, and the top flutist award at the National Music Festival. Allison has been heard on CBC and BBC Radio broadcasts as Principal Flute of NYO Canada. Allison can be seen in NYO Canada’s recent documentary, That Higher Level, produced by Johnny Spence Bolton, documenting the Edges of Canada tour in 2017.

Loud and Clear Podcast

The SSO is thrilled to present a podcast in collaboration with Saskatchewan’s very own Olivia Adams.

Olivia is a pianist, music clinician, and teacher. She holds a MA in Music and Feminist Studies from the University of Ottawa and a B.Mus. in Piano Performance from Western University. Olivia speaks and adjudicates across Canada and the US. She is a researcher on gender and music in Canadian music conservatories and is the author of the forthcoming book “Loud and Clear: Graded Piano Music by Women Composers” centering on the voices of female BIPOC composers comes out this October with Debra Wanless Music & 80 Days Publishing. She has written articles for the Canadian Music Teacher Magazine, Opus, and the book Hands On Piano. In 2020 received a Canadian Government SSHRC grant for her research on gender and race in the conservatory curriculum. Olivia works as a piano teacher and collaborative pianist in Ottawa, and a Music Director at St. Stephen’s Anglican Church. She is passionate about equity in the music studio, writing curriculum, and increasing inclusionary practices in classical music.

Olivia’s new podcast Loud and Clear, amplifies the voices of women in music. In conversation with composers, artists, and musical leaders, the podcast explores the experiences of women in all areas of music creation and production, including conducting, composing, producing, broadcasting, directing, teaching, performance, and research.

New episodes launch each Tuesday everywhere you get your podcasts.

Spotify

Apple Podcasts

Amazon

iHeartRadio

PlayerFM