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Michael Conway Baker (born March 13, 1937) is a Canadian composer and music educator of American birth. He became a naturalized Canadian citizen in 1970 and has lived more or less continuously in the Vancouver area since.
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Michael Conway Baker (born March 13, 1937) is a Canadian composer and music educator of American birth. He became a naturalized Canadian citizen in 1970 and has lived more or less continuously in the Vancouver area since.
Baker was born in West Palm Beach, Florida. After self-teaching basic music theory as a child, Baker moved to Vancouver, British Columbia in 1958 at which time he began formal piano studies. Subsequently, Baker studied music at the University of British Columbia where he was a pupil in music composition with teachers Jean Coulthard and Elliot Weisgarber. After graduating with a Bachelor of Music degree in 1966, he eventually pursued graduate studies at Western Washington University where he earned a Masters of Music in 1972.
Baker has composed numerous scores for film, television and has over 150 concert works to his credit for which he has received many awards. Included in his awards are three Genie Awards (The Grey Fox 1983 and John and the Missus 1987), one Juno Award for Classical Composition of the Year (Concerto For Piano and Chamber Orchestra, 1992) and an ACTRA Award for best score for a TV Series (David Suzuki's A Planet for the Taking). He has composed for the National Ballet of Canada, Fanfare to Expo '86 in Vancouver, many feature films and TV series including several episodes of Road to Avonlea. In 1997, Baker was awarded the Order of British Columbia. [1] Michael Conway Baker was inducted into the British Columbia Entertainment Hall of Fame in November, 2006 with a star on the sidewalk in Vancouver, BC just like his father, comedian Phil Baker has on the sidewalk in Hollywood, CA.
Within the Canadian music circles, he is somewhat well known for having composed Vancouver Variations, used as the theme music for the CBC Radio 2 morning request program Here's to You. Internationally, his music is known for Dorothy Hamill's Ice Capades full length ice-ballet Cinderella: Frozen in Time which toured North America and China for 5 years. Besides that highly popular soundtrack album, he has seven albums entirely of his music as well as having works on many other cds.
Michael Conway Baker spent seventeen years as an elementary school teacher and currently lives in North Vancouver. His wife Penny Anne Baker, manager and lyricist, passed in 2017.
Henry Dreyfuss Brant was a Canadian-born American composer. An expert orchestrator with a flair for experimentation, many of Brant's works featured spatialization techniques.
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Alexina Diane Louie,, is a Canadian composer of contemporary classical music. She has composed for various instrumental and vocal combinations in a variety of genres. She has fulfilled a number of commissions, and her works, which have been performed internationally, have earned her a number of awards, including the Order of Canada and two Juno Awards.
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Phil Dwyer is a Canadian jazz saxophonist, pianist, composer, producer and educator. In 2017 he graduated from the University of New Brunswick (UNB) Faculty of Law in Fredericton, New Brunswick and was called to the bar of British Columbia in 2018. Dwyer is Member of the Order of Canada, having been invested in 2013 "For his contributions to jazz as a performer, composer and producer, and for increasing access to music education in his community." Dwyer has been nominated for Juno Awards six times and won Best Mainstream Jazz Album in 1994 with Dave Young for Fables and Dreams and Contemporary Jazz Album of the Year in 2012 for the recording Changing Seasons. Dwyer has also appeared on Juno Award winning recordings with Hugh Fraser (1988), Joe Sealy (1997), Natalie MacMaster (2000), Guido Basso (2004), Don Thompson (2006), Molly Johnson (2009), Terry Clarke (2010), and Diana Panton (2015). He is an alumnus and Honorary Fellow of The Royal Conservatory of Music.
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