- 2020 Bios
- Aaron James
- Alison Riseley-Clark
- Andrew Adair
- Cari Astleford
- Christopher Dawes
- Damien Macedo
- David Bendix Nielsen
- David Troiano with Trumpeter: Michael Barth
- Eric Hanbury & Ian Sadler Organ Duo
- Giulia Biagetti
- Hanné Becker
- Imre Olah
- John Laing
- Mark Himmelman
- Matthew Whitfield
- Nicholas Wanstall
- Patrick McElcheran
- Peter Nikiforuk
- Richard Spotts
- Simon Walker
- Stefani Bedin
- Thomas Fitches
- Thomas Gonder
- Xaver Varnus
- Zoe Kai Wai Lei
Organix 20 December
2020 Bios
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As an emerging organist, Zoe Lei is an advocate of new organ music and frequently plays twentieth and twenty-first century repertories. Born and raised in Hong Kong, she is currently based in Toronto. she has worked as a church organist at Toronto Bloor Street United Church and Toronto Chinese Baptist Church. |
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Matthew Whitfield is Organist & Director of Music at St. Thomas’s Anglican Church, Huron Street in Toronto. Matthew received his musical training from York University, where he studied with Stephanie Martin, and the University of Toronto, where he received his MMus and worked with John Tuttle. While at the University of Toronto, Matthew performed in masterclasses with Canadian organists Ken Cowan and Isabelle Demers and won prizes in several National and Regional organ competitions. |
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CHRISTOPHER DAWES’ musical life and ministry span genres, ideas, playing for royalty and the homeless, serving and seeking across what some consider to be musical divisions and segregated worlds. He has given solo recitals and accompanied choral tours across North America and Europe, and been broadcast repeatedly on domestic and international radio services. |
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Andrew Adair is Director of Music and Organist at Toronto’s historic Church of St. Mary Magdalene. He previously served as Associate Director of Music at St. James’s Cathedral, Toronto, and as Assistant Organist at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene. At St. James’s Cathedral he contributed regularly to the recital series, playing well over 100 programmes. |
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Cari Astleford is a current Doctor of Musical Arts in organ performance student at the University of Toronto, and is studying with Dr. Patricia Wright. Cari grew up in northern BC, and did her previous organ studies in Alberta. She graduated with a Bachelor of Music in organ performance from Burman University in Lacombe, AB under the instruction of Dr. Wendy Markosky. |
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Patrick McElcheran (hBA, ARCT) is a Toronto-based organist and tenor. He first became acquainted with the pipe organ at Trinity College at the University of Toronto, where he was choral scholar with the Trinity chapel choir. After receiving the RCCO’s Barwell scholarship, Patrick began lessons with Dr. John Tuttle. |
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Damien Macedo is an Associate of the Royal Canadian College of Organists, a seasoned countertenor, and a recent graduate of Queen’s University Law School. Damien has worked in numerous church positions around the globe both as a singer and as an organist, including as Cantor at St. Michael’s Cathedral, Toronto; Alto Choral Scholar at Wells Cathedral, Somerset, UK; and Organist and Cantor at Dormition Abbey, Jerusalem, Israel. |
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Thomas Fitches received his training in Oshawa, Toronto, and Croydon, England, at the Royal School of Church Music. From1965 to 1973 he was the Assistant Organist at the Anglican Church of St. Simon the Apostle in Toronto. |
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Born in Budapest, the legendary organ virtuoso Xaver Varnus was the first child of a mathematician mother and a jazz pianist father. By the age of six, Varnus knew exactly what he would become. His first piano teacher was Emma Németh, one of the last pupils of Claude Debussy. He lit up the musical firmament of the world like a shooting star. At sixteen, he undertook his first concert tour of Europe. In 1981 Varnus left Hungary to study with the formidable Pierre Cochereau, the late organist of Notre Dame-de-Paris. Varnus made his North American debut on 5 May 1985 to a three-thousand-strong audience at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. |
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Imre Olah was born in Hungary, where he studied music in Budapest, specializing in organ performance. His studies later involved specialization in choral music and choral direction. Since moving to Canada in 1989, Imre has served as music director and organist at many Churches. |
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Organist Richard Spotts, a native of Bucks County, Pennsylvania and a graduate of Westminster Choir College in Princeton, has set out to perform and educate the public of this seminal work, with the ultimate goal of performing the complete fifteen-hour cycle in a recital series over a period of ten days. Mr. Spotts has given recitals at cathedrals, universities, and parishes throughout the United States and Canada and is writing a book on the subject. |
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Peter Nikiforuk is a native of Brantford, Ontario. The recipient of numerous prizes and scholarships, in 1993 Peter was awarded the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts in organ from Yale University. Peter also studied at the University of Toronto and the Royal Academy of Music in London, England. |
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Stefani Bedin is a solo and collaborative performer, liturgical musician and teacher, based in her hometown of Toronto. Stefani is currently pursuing the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Toronto, where she recently completed the Master of Music degree in Organ Performance and the Bachelor of Music degree in Music History and Theory (Honours) with a minor in historical keyboard. |
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Eric Hanbury & Ian Sadler Organ Duo Born in Windsor, Ontario, Eric received his early education in England. When the whole family returned to Canada in 1964 he started organ lessons with Dr. Charles Peaker at St. Paul’s Bloor Street. |
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Giulia Biagetti graduated in piano (Lucca), Organ and Organ Composition (Ferrara) and studied choral music and composition with Marino Pratali and Gaetano Giani Luporini. She has continued to raise her level of knowledge and performance by interacting and studying with famous Italian and foreign masters. |
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Mark D. Himmelman (b. 1978), a native of Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Mark Himmelman began playing the organ at the young age of seven years and by age eight had played his first church service. At age eleven Mark began studies in piano and organ under David Zwicker. His teachers have also included Allen Wayte, F. Alan Ressor and John Vandertuin. |
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SIMON WALKER is Director of Music at St. Jude’s Anglican Church, Oakville. In addition he is Assistant Conductor of Oakville Choral Society, and Artistic Director of the Oakville ’Celebration of the Arts’ Concert Series. He is also in regular demand freelance as an accompanist, teacher and conductor. |
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Nicholas Wanstall is an award winning organist, composer, pianist, and vocalist from Toronto, Ontario. He is currently in his third year at the University of Toronto studying Organ Performance under John Tuttle and a minor in Composition with Roger Bergs. Nicholas began studying music at the age of four, taking piano lessons with his grandmother. |
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Andre Rakus with Trumpeter: Katie Clark Andre Rakus began his musical studies with the violin at the age of five. At eight years of age, he attended St. Michael’s Choir School in Toronto, Canada adding voice and piano to his studies. During high school at St. Michael’s College School in Toronto, he studied trumpet. Since completing her Bachelor of Music with Honours in Music Education degree (2014) and Masters of Trumpet Performance and Literature degree (2016) at the University of Western Ontario, Katie Clark has been on a journey exploring trumpet performance, education, and artistry. |
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David Bendix Nielsen is a Danish/Hungarian organistand harpsichordist based in Copenhagen. David is by far one of the most active of the new generation of organists in Denmark, with regular national and international recitals, projects with early music ensembles, choirs and assisting with the DR Danish National Symphony Orchestra. He is educated from the Royal Danish Academy of Music with professor Bine Bryndorf and Hans Fagius. |
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Hanné Becker is a DMA Candidate in Organ Performance in the studio of Prof. Kevin Komisaruk at the University of Toronto. Her research currently focuses on the highly imaginative, virtuosic organ music of Matthias Weckmann (1616 – 1674) with a view to create and publish a new performer’s edition. |
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Alison Clark, a native of New Zealand, traveled to Canada in 1981 to complete a Masters Degree in Organ Performance at McGill University (Montreal). She won the New Zealand Organ Competition when she was 18, and while studying in Montreal she traveled to Chartres (France), Bruges (Belgium), Manchester (England), and Ann Arbor, Michigan to play in more Competitions. Alison has also performed for Radio New Zealand, and Radio Canada (Montreal). |
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David Troiano with Trumpeter: Michael Barth The Organ recitals of David Troiano have garnered notice for their clean performances, musicality, and interesting repertoire. He has appeared throughout the United States; in Canada, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, Poland, Lithuania, Argentina (2020); has appeared in four tours within Finland with Baroque Violinist TapaniYriola; and in many of the great sacred spaces of Mexico including two concerts at LA BASILICA in Mexico City. |
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Organist and musicologist Aaron James is the Director of Music at the Toronto Oratory of St. Philip Neri. An alumnus of the Eastman School of Music, he graduated in 2016 with both a Ph.D. degree in musicology and a DMA degree in organ, along with the Performer’s Certificate in the organ. He was the 2011 winner of the National Organ Playing Competition of the Royal Canadian College of Organists, and has won numerous other prizes and scholarships for his organ playing, including first prizes in the Florence and Stanley Osborne Organ Competition and the Howard FaircloughOrgan Competition; he was also a finalist in the 2012 Franz Schmidt International OrganCompetition (Kitzbühel, Austria). |
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John Laing, conductor, composer, organist and pianist, was born in London, U.K. He began to play the piano and compose at a very young age, and he became a treble chorister in the choir of King’s College, Cambridge under Sir David Willcocks. At the age of twenty he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists. He returned to Cambridge to be Organ Scholar of Corpus Christi College, where he obtained a Bachelor of Music Degree in Organ Performance and Musicology, and a Master of Arts Degree. At the age of twenty-seven he came to live in Canada. |
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