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Join my mass choir at the Ontario Science Centre next week!

Next week, I’m leading a music lab at the Ontario Science Centre as part of their ‘Science of Rock’ special exhibit. Come join in the fun! The music labs last about 40 minutes and you have three chances to participate in the week: Tuesday, Aug 19 at 12 pm and again at 2pm Thurs, Aug 21 at 12 pm only I’d love to stack the audience with some singers, so please join in! Feel free to tell others too! I’ll be touching on some physiology of the singing voice as well as some acoustic principles. Everyone will then learn a… Read More »Join my mass choir at the Ontario Science Centre next week!

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Drop-in Summer Singing Class

I’m launching a series of 4 drop-in group singing classes on Wednesdays, July 23 to August 20. Affordably priced at $10/session, but you must register! I also currently have a few spots left throughout the summer for private lessons on Monday afternoons. For information on both, see upcoming.

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Night Songs: Celebrate Earth Hour with Music

This Saturday night, Echo Women’s Choir and Mariposa in the Schools are holding a joint fundraiser at Holy Trinity Church. Tickets are $35, and come with free wine tasting, plus incredible music from the likes of Gurpreet Chana (The Tabla Guy) and Melanie Doane, as well as Echo, and I’m going to conduct one of the songs and sing with them. The whole evening is hosted by Andrew Craig. Echo Women’s Choir is an 80-voice non-auditioned women’s choir based in Toronto that sings an incredible range of repertoire. Mariposa in the Schools is an amazing organization that introduces the world’s… Read More »Night Songs: Celebrate Earth Hour with Music

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Pete Seeger: The Man of a Million Small, Powerful Actions

So Pete Seeger passed away on Monday at the age of 94. I, like so many millions of people, have been deeply affected and influenced by his music and his commitment to building a more just world through music. I never met him, but I have had the pleasure of singing and teaching his music. I frankly don’t have much to say that could add to the many amazing tributes that have been published, from the New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and the CBC, to name just a few. There’s a fantastic documentary on CBC’s program Ideas that lets… Read More »Pete Seeger: The Man of a Million Small, Powerful Actions

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“the power of the arts”

This past weekend I attended the Power of the Arts National Forum in Ottawa, hosted by the Michaëlle Jean Foundation and Carleton University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Let me first say that there are a surprising number of organizations in Canada working at the intersection of arts and social change. I learned about fantastic projects, like Beautifulcity.ca, which successfully campaigned for a new tax on billboards in Toronto to be streamed into arts funding. Or the research project Pedagogical Impulse, which paired visual artists and 6th grade students to explore ‘Canada and its Trading partners’ in interesting and… Read More »“the power of the arts”

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confronting the rational with the embodied

I just left the ph.d. defense for my capoeira teacher and friend, Lang. Her dissertation on capoeira focuses on how the Afro-Brazilian martial art form is both a powerful site of transformative learning and a challenge to strictly logical/cerebral learning indoctrinated in us in academic institutions. She began defending her thesis this morning by bringing in the whole group and playing in the roda at the beginnning. The University of Toronto is really strict about these things: defenses are not open to the public and we were not allowed to be present during the actual defense. But we were allowed… Read More »confronting the rational with the embodied

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my ‘choir’ is performing tonight

I’m in a ‘choir.’ I have a hard time telling people I’m in this choir without putting quotes around the word. Because you see, it doesn’t look anything like any choir I’ve ever seen or participated in. If your definition of choir is a group of people singing together, then yes. We’re a choir. But after that, us and most other choirs depart ways. You’re probably familiar with a typical choir: people arranged in rows according to voice type, facing a conductor and singing multi-part scored music. I’ve sung in these kinds of choirs, and I’ve directed versions of these… Read More »my ‘choir’ is performing tonight

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looking back, looking forward

Hey there. So it’s 2013. Where did last year go? 2012 brought so much live music into my life, and I drank it all up like a thirsty man finding water in the desert. I have two young kids, so getting out of the house at all, let alone seeing tons of live music, is nothing short of manna. I went to Hillside Festival in Guelph, and to the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, in, well, Edmonton. Got to see Merill Garbus and the incredible tUnE-yArDs (watch this video for a sample of her crazy/raw/fun aesthetic), and I fulfilled a life-long… Read More »looking back, looking forward

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advice for choosing a choir

I was the guest editor for Whole Note magazine’s May 2012 edition. This Toronto area-based music magazine is known for releasing its ‘Canary Pages’ in May– a listing of choirs and other singing opportunities in the Greater Toronto Area for anyone who’s looking to join a choir, or perhaps looking for a change. I was asked to write about choirs and community for this year’s edition(you can read it here). I also had some long, wonderful discussions with two Toronto-based conductors: Isabel Bernaus, conductor of the Jubilate Singers and Common Thread Community Choir; and Becca Whitla, conductor of Echo Women’s… Read More »advice for choosing a choir

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beautiful women singing in a beautiful city

The Twentieth Anniversary Season Concert for Echo Women’s Choir happened this past Sunday. I had the pleasure and privilege of guest conducting a substantial portion of the concert. I don’t have any video or audio–yet–so you’ll have to take my word for it: these 80 women sounded wonderful. The program was pretty eclectic: some gospel, some worker/protest songs, an Arabic love song, a few pieces from the Republic of Georgia. The central piece was a composition called ‘Sun’ (conducted by my colleague Alan Gasser), with text by Eliot Rose and music by William Westcott–this full-on, massive sounding,insane piano-accompanying, hard-to-sing vocal… Read More »beautiful women singing in a beautiful city

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