Elmer Iseler Singers | |
---|---|
Choir | |
Founded | 1979 (43 years ago) |
Website | www |
The Elmer Iseler Singers is a professional chamber choir based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. [1]
The twenty-voice choir, conducted by Artistic Director Lydia Adams, founded by Dr. Elmer Iseler in 1979, [2] is one of Canada’s leading choral ensembles. The choir has built an international reputation through its concerts, broadcasts and more than fifty recordings. The Elmer Iseler Singers’ repertoire spans five hundred years of choral music. The choir regularly commissions and performs new works, and appears at national and international festivals.
The Singers are highly valued for their contributions to master classes and educational leadership workshops for schools and community choirs. From 1997 to 2007 the EIS was the professional Choir-In-Residence through the Elmer Iseler Chair, at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music. They often collaborate with Soundstreams Canada, the Canadian Brass, Nexus, Ontario Music Festivals and the Toronto Symphony, as well as various local, national and international organizations.
The Canadian Brass is a Canadian brass quintet formed in 1970 in Toronto, Ontario, by Charles Daellenbach (tuba) and Gene Watts (trombone), with horn player Graeme Page and trumpeters Stuart Laughton and Bill Phillips completing the quintet. As of 2018, Daellenbach is the sole original member in the group, with the other members being trumpeters Caleb Hudson and Brandon Ridenour, hornist Jeff Nelsen, and trombonist Achilles Liarmakopoulos.
Raymond Murray Schafer was a Canadian composer, writer, music educator, and environmentalist perhaps best known for his World Soundscape Project, concern for acoustic ecology, and his book The Tuning of the World (1977). He was the first recipient of the Jules Léger Prize in 1978.
St. Michael's Choir School is a all male semi-private integrated elementary and secondary school located in downtown Toronto's Garden District in Ontario, Canada. It is operated under a joint venture of Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, and the Toronto Catholic District School Board, although the Archdiocese owns the St. Michael's Choir property.
The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir is a Canadian large vocal ensemble based in Toronto, Ontario. It was co-founded in 1894 by Augustus S. Vogt and W. H. Hewlett to celebrate the opening of the Massey Hall. The ensemble was originally an extension of the choir of Jarvis St. Baptist Church in Toronto which Vogt directed and Hewlett accompanied. It is named after the German composer, Felix Mendelssohn.
Rivka Golani is an Israeli viola player. She has performed as soloist with many orchestras throughout the world including the Boston Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw, BBC Symphony, BBC Philharmonic, Hong Kong Symphony, Singapore Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, Tokyo Metropolitan, Montreal Symphony and the Toronto Symphony. More than 400 pieces have been written for her, including over 90 concertos. The BBC Music Magazine included her in its list of the 200 most important instrumentalists and the five most important violists currently concertizing.
John Beckwith is a Canadian composer, writer, pianist, teacher, and administrator.
Elmer Walter Iseler, was a Canadian choir conductor and choral editor. He was the conductor of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and founder of the Festival Singers of Canada and the Elmer Iseler Singers.
Imant Karlis Raminsh is a Canadian composer of Latvian descent, best known for his choral compositions.
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Festival of the Sound is an annual classical music festival that occurs from July to August in Parry Sound, Ontario, Canada.
The Bach-Elgar Choir is a community chorus of long standing in Hamilton, Ontario, currently directed by Alexander Cann. The Choir is composed of accomplished amateur singers from Hamilton and the neighbouring cities of Burlington, Oakville, Mississauga and Simcoe. Notable performances by the ensemble include the North American première of Verdi's Requiem and the Canadian premieres of Górecki's Miserere and Mahler's Symphony No. 2. The choir has performed at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, The Sanderson Centre in Brantford, and at the Brott Music Festival in Hamilton. The choir makes frequent guest appearances with the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra.
The Festival Singers of Canada was a professional choir located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada from 1954-1979. Founded in 1954 by Elmer Iseler as the Festival Singers of Toronto, the choir was first heard on CBC radio in a 1955 Good Friday broadcast of Bach's Christ lag in Todesbanden. Initially consisting of only 25 voices, the choir expanded to 32 voices and attracted international attention for their work in the early 1960s with Igor Stravinsky. Their recording of Symphony of Psalms, conducted by Stravinsky, was nominated in 1965 for a Grammy Award. Tenor Gordon Wry was one of the founding singers of the chorus.
Gerald Richard Fagan is considered one of Canada's premier choral conductors. He is the former Conductor and Artistic Director of Fanshawe Chorus London, The Gerald Fagan Singers, and the Concert Players Orchestra. He has been married to Marlene Fagan since 1961. They have five children; Leslie, Louise, Judy, Jennifer and Jonathon.
Peter Anthony Togni is a freelance Canadian composer and broadcaster based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. "Togni's music is deeply felt, simply put, well-crafted and irradiated by a personal sense of the divine."
John David Bryson Burge is a Canadian composer, music educator, and pianist. He has won a number of awards for his compositions, including the Alberta Culture Award (1982), the William Erving Fairclough Scholarship (1983), second prize in the Ithaca College Choral Composition Contest and Festival (1984), and five PROCAN Young Composers' Competition prizes between 1985-1988 among others. In 2009 he won the Juno Award for Classical Composition of the Year for his Flanders Fields Reflections. Some music critics have likened his compositional style to that of Benjamin Britten and Maxwell Davies.
Ruth Louise Watson Henderson is a Canadian composer and pianist. She was the accompanist for the Festival Singers of Canada under Dr. Elmer Iseler for many years, where she developed her ear for composing mixed-choral works. Henderson also accompanied the Toronto Children's Chorus under Jean Ashworth Bartle from its inception in 1978 to 2007 and was music director for Kingsway Lampton United Church in Toronto from 1996 to 2013.
Eric Nathan Robertson is a Scottish composer, organist, pianist, and record producer who has been primarily active in Canada. A two time Gemini Award winner, he has composed more than 60 film scores and written music for a number of television series in Canada and the United States. He has also written a considerable amount of choral and organ music, sometimes with instrumental or symphonic accompaniment. His works display a strong influence of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Charles Wood, and William O. Minay, the latter of whom he studied with for over 30 years. He has also produced and played on numerous commercial albums by a variety of artists and released several of his own albums of popular songs and film themes under the name Magic Melodies.
The Oakville Children's Choir is an internationally recognized multi-level community children’s choir that provides children in the Oakville, Ontario community with music education, leadership development and performance opportunities. The organization has six choirs composed of children between the ages of 5 and 18, under the artistic direction of Sarah Morrison.
Hugh John McLean CM was a Canadian organist, choirmaster, pianist, harpsichordist, administrator, teacher, musicologist, composer, and editor.
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