Vincent Mons began his musical journey playing classical guitar and went on to study audio recording at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional d’Annecy. Further studies at the École Louis-Lumière in Paris introduced him to the world of film and radio. At the same time, he developed his concert-recording skills working with KaliSon, a French recording company, for numerous orchestras and festivals such as the Verbier Festival in Switzerland. A stint in Canada with the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity’s audio programme confirmed his desire to continue in this direction. On his return to France, he joined the ranks of independent sound engineers specializing in classical recordings, founding his own company, F13 Audio. Since then, he has worked across Europe on CD productions for a number of labels, both as a recording egineer and producer, adding artistic direction to his work. This year, he is happily back at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional d’Annecy as an instructor.  

Timothy Shantz is active as conductor, collaborator, tenor soloist and teacher. He is Director of Choral Activities at the University of Alberta’s Department of Music and founded Luminous Voices in 2012 after toying with the idea for years. His other choral activities in Calgary included Chorus Master for the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and Artistic Director of Spiritus Chamber Choir. As a conductor, Tim is recognized for the breadth of his work, from early music to contemporary, virtuoso unaccompanied pieces to large-scale choral-orchestral works. He has been honoured to grow as a musician through his ensembles and commissioning projects and continues to learn from them in every rehearsal and performance experience. He has enjoyed sharing accolades with the ensembles he directs and continues to strive for beauty and expression through performances, workshops and recordings.

Timothy holds a Doctor of Music degree in Choral Conducting from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music with a dissertation analyzing the unaccompanied choral work Sun-Dogs by composer James MacMillan. He has studied with John Poole, Jan Harrington, Carmen Tellez, Frieder Bernius, Jon Washburn, Leonard Ratzlaff, Debra Cairns and Noel Edison. 

Composer Sarah Quartel is one of Canada’s most internationally celebrated and widely performed living choral composers. Her music is programmed globally, and her commissions have premiered in spaces such as Carnegie Hall, Canterbury Cathedral, Cité de la Musique Paris, and the famed Temppeliaukio Church in Helsinki. Raised as a choral singer herself, Sarah is inspired by the life-changing relationships that can occur in group singing. Known for her fresh, exciting, and chorister-centred approach to music making, Sarah writes in a way that connects singer to singer, ensemble to conductor, and performer to audience.

Sarah is in high demand as a commissioned composer and values the partnerships built with conductors, educators, and singers as they bring a new work to life together. She has been commissioned by groups including the Orchestre de Paris, The National Youth Choirs of Great Britain, the American Choral Directors Association, The National Children’s Chorus of the USA, Hamilton Children’s Choir, and New Dublin Voices. Sarah’s music is performed by a wide variety of ensembles ranging from professional groups to community and school choirs. Notable performances and recordings include those by VOCES8, Chanticleer, London Voices, Rajaton, The Swingles, The Gesualdo Six, New York Polyphony, The Nathaniel Dett Chorale, and the global mega-choir the Stay at Home Choir.

Sarah is published exclusively with Oxford University Press. 

After performing around the world for seventeen years with the GRAMMY®-nominated British vocal ensemble VOCES8, Andrea has established an international reputation for her clarity of tone and expressive communication. Her journey as a singer began in the children's choir of her local church in Kent, England, before she joined numerous youth choirs and went on to study Music at Cardiff University.

With VOCES8, Andrea performed around 120 concerts each year, touring extensively across Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia in programmes ranging from a cappella concerts to collaborations with leading orchestras, conductors and soloists. She has performed and recorded in many of the world’s most prestigious venues, including Wigmore Hall, Royal Albert Hall, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Vienna Konzerthaus, Abbey Road Studios, Washington National Cathedral, Tokyo Opera City, and Sydney Opera House. She recorded 24 albums with the ensemble (signed to Decca Classics), and enjoyed many collaborations with artists including Paul Simon, Jacob Collier, Cody Fry, and Sami Yusuf.

Andrea continues to perform as a soloist and ensemble singer, with recent highlights including appearances with Eric Whitacre, VOCES8 Foundation, Ringmasters and The Gesualdo Six. In the summer of 2025, she also worked with Justin Vernon, Kurt Wagner, and Blake Morgan on indie band Lambchop’s album ‘Punching the Clown’, (released in August 2026).

Andrea is also leading workshops and masterclasses internationally, focusing on developing singers’ ensemble musicianship and communication, including attending the World Choir Games 2026 as juror and clinician, and co-directing The Consort Project for Sing the North Festival in Victoria, BC. Beyond her work as a vocalist, she also has experience in creating digital artwork, audio production, lyric writing and poetry, arts administration, social media management, and has a particular interest in vocal health.

Whether at home or on the road, Andrea enjoys great food (with a gin and tonic), and is rarely without a yoga mat, notebook, and watercolour paints. 

Image by Mantas

The GRAMMY® Award-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer is known around the world as “an orchestra of voices” for its wide-ranging repertoire and dazzling virtuosity. Founded in San Francisco in 1978 by singer and musicologist Louis Botto, Chanticleer quickly took its place as one of the most prolific recording and touring ensembles in the world, selling more than one million recordings and performing thousands of live concerts to audiences around the globe.

Rooted in the Renaissance, Chanticleer’s repertoire has been expanded to include a wide range of classical, gospel, jazz and popular music and to reflect a deep commitment to the commissioning of new compositions and arrangements. The ensemble has dedicated much of its vast recording catalogue to these commissions, garnering GRAMMY® Awards for its recordings of Sir John Tavener’s Lamentations & Praises and the ambitious collection of commissioned works entitled Colors of Love. Chanticleer is the recipient of Chorus America’s Dale Warland Singers Commission Award and the Chorus America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming. During his tenure with Chanticleer, Music Director Emeritus Joseph H. Jennings received the Chorus America Brazeal Wayne Dennard Award for his contribution to the African American choral tradition.

Named for the “clear-singing” rooster in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Chanticleer continues to maintain ambitious programming in its hometown of San Francisco, including a large education and outreach program, and an annual concert series that includes its legendary holiday tradition, A Chanticleer Christmas.

Chanticleer—a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation—is the current  recipient of major grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, San Francisco Grants for the Arts, Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Bob Ross Foundation, Dunard Fund USA, E. Nakamichi Foundation, Mid Atlantic Arts, and the Negaunee Foundation. Chanticleer’s activities as a not-for-profit corporation are supported by its administrative staff and Board of Trustees. 

Image by Stephen K Mack

Jessie Maryon Davies is musical energiser. In 2018, she was awarded The Unsung Hero award by Time Out recognising her achievements in building community through music. She performs regularly as a pianist both in classical and pop settings (Kate Nash, Ren Harvieu, Tone). She leads creative music projects in schools and community groups across the U.K and has conducted children’s choirs in Palestine and India. Jessie is Musical Director of trans-inclusive, women’s pop choir Lips who have performed at the Royal Festival Hall, Royal Albert Hall and live on BBC Television. In 2015 she co-founded the award-winning charity Spark the Noise to help build self-esteem and confidence among girls, trans and non-binary youth in London. As a composer, she specialises in co-creation and has written music for English National Opera, Wigmore Hall, City of London Sinfonia, Britten Pears Arts and Hightide Theatre. In 2026 she wrote the music and lyrics for children's musical Mrs Armitage - a live stage version of Quentin Blake's much loved classic (Southbank Centre, Edinburgh Fringe). A passionate speaker on music’s unique power to strengthen community and enable personal development, Jessie has spoken live on BBC radio, delivered a Tedex talk and chaired panels at the Southbank Centre and Serious Festival. She trains and mentors young professional musicians at the Wigmore Hall and the Royal Academy of Music,  where she was recently awarded the honour of Associate. 

The Montreal-based quartet ARCHITEK PERCUSSION creates artistic experiences that entertain, captivate, and challenge audiences, often simultaneously. Founded in 2012 by members of McGill University’s Percussion Studio, Architek is equally comfortable performing classic quartet repertoire and exploring new terrain through commissions and premieres, often using instrument batteries that extend far beyond the traditional arsenal of instruments associated with percussion. Architek regularly performs in Montreal, having partnered with Codes d’Acces, Innovations en Concert, Le Vivier, Suoni per Il Popolo, Montréal/Nouvelles Musiques, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, the Pointe-a-Calliere Museum, and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT). In addition, the quartet has collaborated extensively with the Montreal Arts Council’s CAM En Tournée program, which presents free, accessible arts programming across the 19 boroughs and 15 independent municipalities that comprise the Island of Montreal.

Architek regularly concertizes and conducts educational outreach across Canada, collaborating with New Music Edmonton, the Winnipeg New Music Festival, The Cluster Festival of Music and Integrated Art (Winnipeg), Jeunesses Musicales Canada, Debut Atlantic, Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, Music on Main (Vancouver), The University of Toronto New Music Festival, The Music Gallery (Toronto), New Music Concerts (Toronto), the Scotia Festival of Music (Halifax), and nearly all of Canada’s post-secondary music institutions. Architek’s international touring has taken them across Northern Europe in collaboration with the Ultima Festival (Oslo), NyMusikk Bergen, NTNU (Trondheim), Fylkingen (Stockholm), the Universities of Glasgow and Huddersfield (UK), Rainy Days Festival (Luxembourg), and the Royal College of Music (Stockholm).

Architek has commissioned and/or premiered over 60 works by composers from around the world. Several of these commissions have led to commercial recording projects, of which Architek appears on eight: Bookburners (Nicole Lizée / Centrediscs, 2014), A Boat Upon its Blood (Jason Sharp / Constellation Records, 2016), Metatron (Eliot Britton / Ambiances Magnétiques, 2017), Katana of Choice (Ben Reimer / Redshift Records, 2017), The Privacy of Domestic Life (Architek Percussion / Centrediscs, 2018), Six Changes (Architek Percussion 2022), Call Sign (Architek Percussion, 2022), and Apparitions vol. I (Olivier Alary / Line Imprints, 2023). Architek’s remarkably diverse artistic output is guided by the quartet’s belief that, given proper context, every audience member should feel welcomed, included, and challenged. Architek Percussion is Noam Bierstone, Ben Duinker, Alexander Haupt, and Alessandro Valiante.

Image by Julianna Schutz