Biographies
Hallie Fishel, soprano, is one of North America’s leading interpreters of early music and is in demand as a coach and lecturer on performance practice and the place of music in early modern culture at universities and colleges across North America. Institutions at which she has recently performed and lectured include University of Toronto, York University, Lafayette College, University of Syracuse, City University of New York, Trent University, as well as the Bata Shoe Museum and the Center for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. As well as performing in historically informed concerts, she maintains a busy studio of vocal students studying everything from plainchant to opera to jazz.
John Edwards specializes in playing numerous historical plucked string instruments, from the medieval lute to the theorbo to the nineteenth century guitar. Though he plays continuo lutes with orchestras, Mr. Edwards has always had a love of song and is in high demand as an accompanist and coach. He is a Fellow of the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies at the University of Toronto and has given lectures and demonstrations throughout North America.
Special Guests
Described by Opera Canada as having an “attractive, bright sound”, Bud Roach has quickly made a name for himself as a performer of both early music and the contemporary. Beginning his career as an oboist, he began singing tenor in 2005, and since that time has performed with many of Canada’s finest ensembles.
After earning a Master of Music degree from Yale University in oboe performance, Bud performed frequently with the orchestras of the National Ballet of Canada, the Canadian Opera Company, and Orchestra London. From 1997-2004 he held Oboe and English Horn positions in the United States, with the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, Michigan Opera Theater, and the Buffalo Philharmonic.
Since his invitation by Lydia Adams in 2005 to join the Elmer Iseler Singers, Bud has had many solo opportunities with that ensemble, including the role of “Trickster” in the Melissa Hui/Tomson Highway opera The Journey, the first opera in the Cree language (Soundstreams Canada). This performance prompted the Toronto Star to declare him a “must-hear lyric tenor”. The Globe and Mail was equally enthusiastic: “Bud Roach was superb…this oboist-turned-singer not only has a beautiful lyric tenor, but is a natural on stage”.
In concert, he has appeared with the Toronto Consort, Soundstreams, The Toronto Chamber Choir, the Grand River Baroque Festival, the Ottawa Choral Society, the Amadeus Choir, Arcady, the Tallis Choir, the Toronto Continuo Collective, and the Jerusalem Early Music Workshop, performing the title role in Carissimi’s Jephte. Bud has been a frequent soloist with the Aradia Ensemble, earning critical praise from the American Record Guide and BarnesandNoble.com for the Naxos label recording of Handel’s Israel in Egypt. A second Naxos recording (Samuel Arnold’s ballad opera Polly) will be released in May of 2010. On the operatic stage, Bud has appeared with Opera Atelier, the Canadian Opera Company, and performed the role of Tamino in Mozart’s Die Zauberflote in Fidenza, Italy.
Recent projects include the Canadian premiere of Andrew Staniland’s “Calamus 6″ (Walt Whitman) as part of the Canadian Music Centre’s “Intimate Spaces” project at Toronto’s Nuit Blanche Festival. Bud also attended the Britten-Pears School at Aldeburgh for performances of the St. John Passion with Mark Padmore, and performed Bach’s B Minor Mass at the Canadian Bach Festival in South Huron.
Lysiane Boulva holds a Master in harpsichord from the Université de Montréal and a Master in Arts in early music and historical performance practice from the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, Netherlands (2010).
She has performed in France, Belgium, Netherlands and in Canada, for concerts organized, among others, by the Festival Oude Muziek − Fringe Festival in Utrecht (NL), the Festival Alexandria (ON), the Amis de l’orgue de Rimouski (QC), the Concerts aux Iles du Bic Festival (QC) and as a guest artist with the baroque ensemble I FURIOSI (Toronto).
Recipient of a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, an Ontario Graduate Scholarship as well as a J. Armand Bombardier Internationalist Fellowship, Lysiane has studied with Fabio Bonizzoni, Kenneth Gilbert, Ton Koopman, Réjean Poirier and Blandine Verlet. She now pursues a Doctorate in Musical Arts at the University of Toronto with Charlotte Nediger and Mary Ann Parker, during which she is specialising in French harpsichord music of the 18th century.
Edwin Huizinga Edwin Huizinga has toured throughout Canada, Europe and Asia with Tafelmusik and performed with the Aradia Ensemble and I Furiosi. He has soloed with the Oberlin, Note Bene and San Francisco Baroque Orchestras, the San Bernardino Symphony, the Sacremento Baroque Ensemble, the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Orchestra and the Carmel Bach Festival Orchestra. He has been the guest concert master of the San Francisco Bach Chorale, the guest director of the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, has toured with the Wallfisch Band under Gustav Leonhardt and been a guest artist at the Conservatory of Amsterdam. Currently a member of the ensemble Passemezzo Moderno, this November he will be making his Carnegie Hall debut with the Theatre of Early Music. Edwin has a passion for bringing chamber music to the people and is a founding member of the Classical Revolution, which began in San Francisco in 2006. He is now developing a Toronto chapter which will bring chamber music closer to the public. An avid improviser, Edwin can be found collaborating in many different genres in the artistic community.