Évolution/classique

Violinist Annalee Patipatanakoon is one of Canada’s most respected performing artists. A laureate of the Queen Elizabeth Violin Competition in Brussels, Belgium, as well as a First Prize winner of the Canadian Music Competition and the Eckhardt-Gramatté Competition for Canadian Music, Annalee is a graduate of Indiana University and the Curtis Institute of Music, and is Associate Professor of Violin and Chamber Music at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music.

As a founding member of the three-time Juno Award winning Gryphon Trio, Annalee can be heard on the Trio’s 23 recordings on the Analekta, Naxos, and other labels, and maintains a busy touring schedule across Canada and the United States each season. She serves as Artistic Advisor to the Ottawa Chamber Music Society, and is Artist-in-Residence at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music and Trinity College. Gryphon Trio performances are regularly broadcast nationwide on CBC Radio Canada.

Equally in demand as a teacher of violin and chamber music, Annalee has taught and conducted masterclasses at Rice University, Stanford University, the Royal Conservatory of Music, the Hochshule für Musik-Mainz, Domaine Forget, the Orford Academy, the Tuckamore Festival and School, Mount Royal University, and many more. With the Gryphon Trio, Annalee leads educational projects in music schools and communities across the country, including the group’s flagship Listen Up! outreach program with permanent hubs in Ottawa and Etobicoke.

Portrait by Bo Huang.

Over the course of two decades, cellist and producer Roman Borys has distinguished himself as one of Canada’s leading artistic voices. As a founding member of the three-time Juno Award-winning Gryphon Trio, he has released 23 acclaimed records on the Analekta, Naxos, and other labels, toured internationally since 1993, and broken new artistic ground through cross genre collaborations and multimedia performances. In 2013, the Gryphon Trio was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts’ Walter Carsen Award for Achievement in the Arts.

As the Executive and Artistic Director of the Ottawa Chamber Music Society, Roman oversees all aspects of programming its summer Chamberfest, one of the largest festivals of its kind in the world, and its fall-winter concert series. Deeply committed to classical music outreach and audience development, Roman has conceived, developed, and produced the Gryphon Trio’s flagship educational program Listen Up! in communities across Canada since 2010.

Roman lives and works in both Ottawa and Toronto and received an honorary doctorate from Carleton University in recognition of his contribution to the community.

Portrait by Bo Huang.

Jamie Parker’s achievements are both lengthy and impressive. His musical roots can be traced to the Vancouver Academy of Music and University of British Columbia where he studied with Kum Sing Lee, then went on to complete his master's and doctorate with Adele Marcus at The Juilliard School. Dr. Parker continues the teaching tradition as the Rupert E. Edwards Chair in Piano Performance on the music faculty at the University of Toronto.

Beginning in 1984 with a first prize at the Eckhardt-Gramatte Competition, James served notice that he was a rising star. The CBC competition concurred, selecting him winner of the 25th National Competition for Young Performers. The Virginia P. Moore Award as the most promising young classical artist soon followed, further solidifying his place as one of Canada’s best.

On-air programs have repeatedly sought out his performances. James has made frequent appearances on CBC, and performances on Bravo!, the CanWest Global Network, MuchMusic, and myriad stations across the globe.

James' style has earned him The Globe and Mail’s praise as “One of the most searching musical intellects and 10 of the nimblest fingers in the business.” James has enthralled audiences in North America and Europe, counting diplomats and dignitaries among his receptive audiences.

A consummate professional, James is recognized as a soloist and chamber musician. As well as being the pianist for Canada’s foremost ensemble, the Gryphon Trio, he has critically acclaimed performances with major Canadian symphonies like Toronto, Vancouver, National Arts Centre, Nova Scotia, and many in between. With three JUNO recording awards and many other nominations from his vast discography, James Parker continues to graciously strive to do it all.

Portrait by Bo Huang.

Violinist and violist Matt Albert is the Chair of Chamber Music at the School of Music, Theatre & Dance at the University of Michigan. He previously served as the Director of Chamber Music and SYZYGY at the Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University. He was a founding member of Eighth Blackbird, with whom he received numerous awards, including first prizes at the Naumburg, Concert Artists Guild, Coleman, and Fischoff Competitions, and three Grammy awards for their recordings on Cedille Records. He serves as one of the concertmasters for Nu Deco Ensemble and regularly plays as the violist with Alarm Will Sound. Previous collaborations include work with Seraphic Fire, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Wilco, the Shreveport Symphony (as Concertmaster), the Baltimore Symphony, and the Sarasota Orchestra (as Associate Concertmaster). In the summers he mentors for Evolution: Classical at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and he plays principal second violin for the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music.

Image by RR Jones.

Sri Lankan-born Dinuk Wijeratne is a JUNO, SOCAN, ECMA, and Masterworks-winning composer, conductor, and pianist, described by The New York Times as “exuberantly creative” and Toronto Star as “an artist who reflects a positive vision of our cultural future”. His work takes him to international venues as poles apart as the Berlin Philharmonie and the North Sea Jazz Festival. Dinuk made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2004 as composer, conductor, and pianist, performing with Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble and returned to Carnegie in 2009, alongside tabla legend Zakir Hussain. Dinuk has also appeared at the Kennedy Center, Opera Bastille, Lincoln Center, Teatro Colón, Sri Lanka, Japan, and across the Middle East. He was featured as a main character in What Would Beethoven Do?, the documentary about classical music innovation featuring Eric Whitacre, Bobby McFerrin, and Ben Zander. Growing up in Dubai, Dinuk studied composition at the Royal Northern College of Music and Juilliard, with Oscar-winner John Corigliano. Conducting studies followed at Mannes College under David Hayes, and doctoral studies with Christos Hatzis at the University of Toronto. Dinuk has conducted the orchestras of the National Arts Centre, Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, PEI, Scotia Festival, and Symphony Nova Scotia during his three-year appointment as Conductor-in-Residence. He is the recipient of the Canada Council Jean-Marie Beaudet award for orchestral conducting; the NS Established Artist Award; NS Masterworks nominations for his Tabla Concerto and piano trio Love Triangle; double Merritt Award nominations; Juilliard, Mannes and Countess of Munster scholarships; the Sema Jazz Improvisation Prize; the Soroptimist International Award for Composer-Conductors; and the Sir John Manduell Prize, the RNCM’s highest student honor. His music and collaborative work embrace the great diversity of his international background and influences.

Image by Raoul Manuel Schnell

A pianist and 2003 winner of the Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition (CAG), Tanya Bannister has made a versatile career immersed in both tradition and entrepreneurship, seeking to create projects that inspire genuine connections between music and the world we live in. In addition to an active performing career, she has developed an interest in institution building in the arts over many years, principally through her work as Artistic Director of Alpenkammermusik, an annual chamber music festival in Austria, and as a founder of RoadMaps, an artistic, humanitarian and cultural venture. Born in Hong Kong, Tanya holds degrees from the Royal Academy of Music in London, Yale University, where she studied with Claude Frank, and New York’s Mannes School of Music, where she received an Artist Diploma as one of a handful of pianists selected to study with Richard Goode. She joined CAG as President in July 2018.

Image by Lisa Marie Mazzucco

Åstrand is a renowned Swedish mallet specialist, a unique voice of both the marimba and the vibraphone. He is a sought after soloist, regularly performing and giving master classes internationally. Since 2017, Åstrand heads the contemporary music and improvisation class at Orford Music Summer Academy. Also commissioned as a composer, compositions include works for percussion and chamber ensembles, brass quintets, saxophone quartet, choirs, and big band. A more spectacular side features compositions for ice instruments for percussion ensemble, as well as using fighter aircrafts, snow trucks, and buildings as instruments to be played on. Åstrand’s music can also be found in multimedia performances including dance, video projections, ice instruments, and fire sculptures. Anders Åstrand regularly collaborates with various ensembles and groups. He plays vibraphone in both Soundscape Orchestra and Firm roots. Åstrand also plays the vibes in the big band Ann-Sofie Söderqvist Jazz Orchestra, and can be heard on the albums Move. The duo Vibes and Bass (Mikael Berglund, bass and Anders Åstrand, mallets) has released two albums with original music, Seven Thoughts and Frantelunia. His own groups include WÅG (Mattias Wager, church organ; Anders Åstrand, mallets and percussion, and Gary Graden, vocals), Åstrand-Erlandsson Duo (Robert Erlandsson, double bass and Anders Åstrand mallets), and his percussion ensemble, Global Percussion Network, with which he has toured extensively in Sweden, Europe, the United States, and South Korea. Anders Åstrand regularly performs at Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC). He functions as International Education Orchestral Consultant for Zildjian since 2008. Anders Åstrand plays Yamaha instruments, Zildjian cymbals, Vic Firth mallets, and Evans drumheads.

Image by Anders Astrand

Simone Dinnerstein American pianist Simone Dinnerstein is known for her “majestic originality of vision” (The Independent) and her “lean, knowing and unpretentious elegance” (The New Yorker). In 2017, Dinnerstein released the album Mozart in Havana, recorded in Cuba with the Havana Lyceum Orchestra. She went on to bring the orchestra to the United States for their first ever American tour. In the same year, Dinnerstein premiered a piano concerto written for her by Philip Glass and co-commissioned by twelve orchestras. Since then she has performed the concerto with orchestras nationally and internationally, including MDR Leipzig and the London Symphony Orchestra. Her recording of it, Circles, was released in May and immediately hit No. 1 on the Classical Billboard chart. Dinnerstein first attracted attention in 2007 with her self-produced recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. It was a remarkable success, reaching No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Classical Chart, and established Dinnerstein’s distinctive and original approach. The New York Times called her “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.” Her career has since taken her around the world from Brazil to Japan and she has made a further eight albums with repertoire from Beethoven to Ravel. Dinnerstein is committed to musical outreach. She plays concerts for the Piatigorsky Foundation, an organization dedicated to bringing classical music to non-traditional venues. Under their auspices she gave the first classical music performance in the Louisiana state prison system at the Avoyelles Correctional Center. She also runs her own concert series supporting music education in public schools.

Image by Lisa Marie Mazzucco

Aiyun Huang enjoys a musical life as soloist, chamber musician, researcher, teacher and producer. Globally recognized since winning the 2002 First Prize and Audience Prize of the Geneva International Music Competition. She is a champion of existing repertoire and a prominent voice in the collaborative creation of new works. Huang has commissioned and premiered over two hundred works in her two decades as a soloist and chamber musician. The Globe and Mail critic Robert Everett-Green describes Huang’s playing as “engrossing to hear and to watch” and her choice of repertoire as capable of “renovating our habits of listening.” Her past highlights include performances at the Victoria Hall in Geneva, Weill Recital Hall in New York, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra’s Green Umbrella Series, LACMA Concert Series, Holland Festival, Agora Festival in Paris, Banff Arts Festival, 7éme Biennale d’Art Contemporaine de Lyon, Vancouver New Music Festival, CBC Radio, La Jolla Summerfest, Scotia Festival, Cool Drummings, Montreal New Music Festival, Centro Nacional Di Las Artes in Mexico City, Cervantino Festival, and National Concert Hall and Theater in Taipei. Her recent highlights include performances with St. Lawrence String Quartet, L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Taipei Symphony Orchestra and San Diego Symphony Orchestra. Her recent premieres include works by Philippe Leroux, David Bithell, Nicole Lizée, George Lewis, and Eliot Britton.

Dana Fonteneau draws on her diverse background in music, business, finance, and psychology to help her clients attain greater personal and career success. She is part performance coach, management consultant, financial advisor, and therapist. Her international practice is centered in the arts where she works with top musicians, actors, dancers, and educators, as well leading administrators, board members, and managers. Her clients have included Grammy Award-winners, Avery Fisher career grant recipients, and Fulbright Scholars. She has also worked with members of the Boston, Dallas, and Seattle Symphonies and faculty from the Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, Peabody Institute, and San Francisco Conservatory. Dana has appeared as guest speaker at the Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music, University of Michigan, Rice University, University of Texas at Austin, and the San Francisco Conservatory. She has presented at the Chamber Music America National Conference, the Association of Performing Arts Professionals Conference, the United States Marine Band, and Eighth Blackbird’s Creative Lab. Dana’s writing can be found on her blog The WholeHearted Musician™, and in feature articles for Strings Magazine and Chamber Music Magazine. Her book, It's Not (JUST) About the Gig, examines what success means to musicians and how to achieve it. Dana is a conservatory trained musician who has performed as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player around the world. She holds degrees in cello performance from the San Francisco Conservatory and a M.A. in Counseling Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, is a Demartini Method and Demartini Values Facilitator, and is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (MFC49425) in the State of California.

Image by Valentina Sadiul

Dubbed "Canada's pre-eminent clarinetist and wind soloist” by the Toronto Star, James Campbell has performed as soloist and chamber musician in over 35 countries with over 60 orchestras including the Boston Pops, Montreal Symphony, and the London Symphony. He has collaborated with Glenn Gould and Aaron Copland and toured with over 35 string quartets, including the Guarneri, Amadeus, and Vermeer. Of his over 40 recordings, the BBC and The Times of London rated his recording of the Brahms Clarinet Quintet as the best available and his CD “Stolen Gems” (Marquis Records) won a JUNO award. He has been inducted in the CBC Classical Music Hall of Fame, named Canada’s Artist of the Year, awarded the Queen’s Gold and Diamond Jubilee Medal, an Honorary Doctor of Laws, and the Order of Canada. James Campbell has been Artistic Director of the Festival of the Sound since 1985 and has been Professor of Music at the famed Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University since 1988. 

Image by Tim Leyes

Hailed as a “Virtuoso” and “Intensely Soulful” by The New York Times and “Spellbinding” by The New Yorker, his distinctive sound across genres has gained him international recognition as clarinetist and composer. Kinan was recently named composer-in-residence with Classical Movements for the 2017-2018 season while also touring the world as soloist and improviser. Notable appearances include: Opera Bastille, Tchaikovsky Grand Hall, Carnegie Hall and the UN’s New York general assembly, Royal Albert hall, Teatro Colon, Berlin Philharmonie, Library of Congress, Kennedy Center, Mozarteum, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, and Damascus opera house for its opening concert in his native Syria. He has appeared as soloist with the New York Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, Bavarian Radio Orchestra, West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Qatar Philharmonic, and the Syrian Symphony Orchestra among others; and has shared the stage with Yo-Yo Ma, Marcel Khalife, Aynur, Daniel Barenboim, and Jivan Gasparian. His compositions include solo, orchestra, and chamber music; film, live illustration, and electronic works. His discography include three albums with his ensemble Hewar, several soundtracks for film and dance, a duo album with pianist Dinuk Wijeratne, and an album with his New York Arabic-Jazz quartet the Kinan Azmeh CityBand. He serves as artistic director of the Damascus Festival Chamber Players and is a frequent guest faculty at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music and on the advisory board of the Nova Scotia Youth Orchestra. He is a member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble with whom he was awarded a Grammy in 2017. Kinan is a graduate of New York’s Juilliard school as a student of Charles Neidich, and both the Damascus High institute of Music where he studied with Shukry Sahwki, Nicolay Viovanof, and Anatoly Moratof, and Damascus University’s School of Electrical Engineering. Kinan earned his doctorate degree in music from the City University of New York in 2013.

Image by Connie Tsang

Kevork Mourad was born in Qamishli, a town in northeastern Syria. Of Armenian heritage, he received his Master of Fine Arts from the Yerevan Institute of Fine Arts in Armenia, and now lives and works in New York. With his technique of spontaneous painting, where he shares the stage with musicians—a collaboration in which art and music develop in counterpoint to each other—he has worked with many world-renowned musicians, including Kinan Azmeh, Brooklyn Rider, Ken Ueno, Liubo Borissov, and Issam Rafea. Mourad is a member, as a visual artist, of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble. He has performed, among others, at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Bronx Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Harvard University, the Morgenland Festival, Lincoln Center Atrium, the Art Institute of Chicago, the American Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Central Park’s Summerstage, the Nara Museum in Japan, the ElbPhilharmonie in Hamburg, and Le Festival du Monde Arabe in Montreal, as well as the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto. His digital piece The Map of Future Movements toured as part of a group exhibition in Jerusalem and Ramallah, and was featured in the 2010 Liverpool Biennial. As a teaching artist with Silkroad, he has worked with public school students throughout the five boroughs of New York.

Image by Connie Tsang

Jamaal Jackson Rogers; stage name Just Jamaal the Poet, is an award winning poet, arts educator, social engagement officer, and recording-performance artist. In the last seven years, he has brought his work to audiences nationally and abroad, and served as Ottawa's poet laureate from 2017 to 2019. His defining moments occur when he makes intimate connections with his participants during workshops and performance sets. His topics range from emotional maturity to world issues, from parenting to the human condition. He is a father of six and resides in Ottawa, Canada, using the capital and his performance studio, The Origin Arts and Community Centre as his launch pad to teach, mentor, and advocate for the arts.

Image by Merritt Decloux

John Zion has served as the Managing Director of MKI Artists since taking ownership of the firm in 2015. He oversees strategic planning and operations, and directs the careers of a prestigious roster of international artists. He serves on the board of Chamber Music America and has presented on arts-related issues at the Manhattan School of Music, the University at Buffalo, APAP|NYC, Chamber Music America’s National Conference, and the Avaloch Farm Music Institute. In 2012, he was named one of the “Rising Stars in the Performing Arts” by Musical America. John studied at Lawrence University and the Hartt School of Music; before coming to MKI Artists, he performed regularly as a violinist with orchestras throughout New England, taught public-school music, and toured Vietnam with his string quartet. In his free time, John enjoys cooking, reading, and traveling.

Allen is a passionate music lover, storyteller, accomplished trombonist, writer, and broadcaster. He brings a wealth of knowledge to CBC Music. Tom hosted Music and Company on CBC Music for ten years and then went on to host CBC Music Mornings. Prior to this, his weekly stories aired to a keen Ontario audience on CBC Radio One's Fresh Air and nationally on This Morning. He is the creator, along with the harpist Lori Gemmell, of a series of stage shows mixing storytelling, history, classical music, and original popular song. These shows include Bohemians in Brooklyn ("slickly written" and "beautifully punctuated," Now Magazine), The Judgment of Paris, From Weimar to Vaudeville, and The Missing Pages, all of which have received dozens of performances and tour the country on an ongoing basis. Tom has also authored three books, most recently The Gift of the Game, a reflection on hockey and the role the game plays in the life of a divorced parent. Allen studied at McGill University, graduated from Boston University and received his M.A. at Yale University. While looking for full-time work as a trombonist, he temped on Wall Street and cooked in a Mexican restaurant. In 1987, he began touring with the Great Lakes Brass until he joined CBC Radio in Halifax. Tom lives with his wife in Toronto with their son, hoping for visits from the other kids who aren't kids anymore. He is an avid cyclist and plays recreational hockey and basketball.

Jeff Reilly is a Juno-nominated musician that leads a multifaceted life as a bass clarinetist, composer, conductor, a mature improviser, a CBC radio music producer, video producer, and as a radio documentary maker. A recording artist for the prestigious German label ECM and the Montreal based ATMA Classique, he has performed with choirs, orchestras and chamber groups, in music festivals, cathedrals, and concert halls around the world.

His approach to music blurs any simple distinctions between improvisation and composition, and he strives to do it with such integrity that we are reminded that these distinctions are moot.

As the CBC’s head of music performance for the Atlantic region he has produced thousands of hours of radio programming, including four multi-episode documentaries on music for the program IDEAS. He has produced hundreds of concert recordings of classical, jazz, world and contemporary music, hundreds of studio sessions ,and over 25 CD’s of Canadian jazz and classical music.

Over the past decade he has produced multiple music videos, both live and in-studio, including the very successful series of classical music videos by Tom Allen for CBC Music. 

Patricia O’Callahan’s fifteen-year career has taken her across genres, continents, and a range of disciplines and passions. Her recording career spans six solo albums and many interesting visits along the way as a guest on other artists’ CDs. Speaker of French, Spanish, and German, her early recordings focused on European cabaret, and she is considered a specialist, most significantly, in the music of Kurt Weill. O’Callaghan has performed his Threepenny Opera, Seven Deadly Sins, and Kleine Mahagonny with Soulpepper Theatre Company, Edmonton Opera, Vancouver Opera, and others. She has sung with some of the world’s great ensembles and artists (Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Don Byron Quartet, Bryn Terfel), and has performed in venues that range from London’s Royal Opera House to New York’s Le Poisson Rouge. She has worked with R. Murray Schafer, Dennis Lee, Christos Hatzis, Steve Reich, David Braid, and Steven Page. Her most recent albums are Deepest December, Matador: The Songs of Leonard Cohen, and the recently JUNO nominated Corona Divinae Misericordiae, by David Braid.

Image by Andrew MacNaughtan

Hailed in the Canadian press as "one of his country’s true renaissance men when it comes to music" (The Ottawa Citizen), composer and pianist, David Braid is a nine-time nominee, and three-time winner of Canada's highest music honour (JUNO Award). Recognized for his solo jazz piano recording, Verge, large-ensemble recording, The David Braid Sextet Live, and small-ensemble recording, The North, his foray into classical composition earned his first Sacred Work Corona Divinae Misericordiae a nomination for Classical Album of the Year. David Braid concertizes his original music and improvisations in the United Kingdom, Scandinavia, Europe, Russia, Central Asia, China, Australia, and Canada. Described as "brilliant" (Montreal Gazette), "enchanting" (The Age, Australia), "une force poétique" (Le Soleil), and "hauntingly beautiful" (The Globe and Mail), Braid’s music combines the discipline of European classical music with the spontaneity of jazz. David Braid is a Steinway Artist, composer-in-residence for Sinfonia U.K. Collective, artist-in-residence at the University of Toronto, Adjunct Professor at the Danish National Conservatory of Music, and faculty member at the International Chamber Music Festival Casalmaggiore, Italy. He is a recipient of the Ontario Foundation for the Arts’ prestigious prize, Paul de Hueck and Norman Walford Career Achievement Award for Keyboard Artistry. His arrangements and compositions were an integral part of the Chet Baker-inspired film, Born to Be Blue and his jazz score received praise for its "contemporary patina without sacrificing period authenticity" (The Times, UK). He also won Best Original Score and Best Original Song at the 2017 Screen Awards.

Image by Jimmy Katz