Happy Birthday to Us!

Katrina Gimon

Named as one of Canada's ‘hot 30 classical musicians under 30’ by the Canadian Broadcasting Company; composer, improviser, and vocalist Katerina Gimon's uniquely dynamic, poignant, and eclectic compositional style is rapidly gaining her a reputation as one of the most distinctive emerging voices in contemporary Canadian composition. Katerina’s music has been described as “sheer radiance” (Campbell River Mirror), “imbued…with human emotion” (San Diego Story), and capable of taking listeners on a “fascinating journey of textural discovery” (Ludwig Van). Her works have been performed across Canada, the United States, and Europe at prominent events such as ACDA Conferences (National and Regional), Choral Canada’s Podium Conference, and as part of the Vancouver Opera Festival, as well as at renowned venues such as Carnegie Hall and the Orpheum Theatre. Recent commissions include new music for the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the University of Montana, Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound, the Hamilton Children’s Choir, and the Orpheus Choir of Toronto. She is currently the composer-in-residence for female vocal ensemble Myriad and is primarily based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Read more at katerinagimon.com

Dory Hayley, soprano
Praised for her “very personal creative power” (Badener Zeitung) and her “amazing coloratura skills” (Opera Canada), Dory Hayley has been a soloist with the Vancouver Symphony, the Bourgas Symphony, the Allegra Chamber Orchestra, the Turning Point Ensemble, and Capriccio Basel, and has appeared in recital in Europe, Asia, and North and South America. She has performed in festivals such as Sonic Boom, the Happening Festival, Gulangyu Piano Festival, Performer’s Voice Symposium, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, and the Atempo Festival of Caracas, and with organizations like the SMCQ, Chants Libres, CIRMMT, Codes d’accès, Vancouver New Music, the Little Chamber Music Series That Could, and the Land’s End Ensemble. She is a member of the Erato Ensemble, the Broadwood Duo, and the Hayley-Laufer Duo.
An enthusiastic performer of contemporary music, Dory has worked with composers such as Helmut Lachenmann, Georges Aperghis, Diógenes Rivas, Owen Underhill, and Jordan Nobles, and created roles in Mark Haney’s Omnis Temporalis and Michael James Park’s Diagnosis Diabetes.
A former Visiting Scholar at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute, Visiting Artist at University at Buffalo’s Creative Arts Initiative, and Visiting Faculty Artist at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, she currently teaches at Vancouver Community College. She is the Artistic Co-Director of the Blueridge Chamber Music Festival.
Dory pursued vocal studies at McGill University, the University of British Columbia, and the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien, and has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Koerner Foundation, the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada, and the Conseil des arts et des letters du Québec. She holds a Doctor of Music degree from Université de Montréal.

Read more at doryhayley.com

Tina Biello is a poet, playwright, actor and mask artist and teacher. She is the current Poet Laureate for Nanaimo, 2017-2020. She has honed her skills as a poet over the years working with many fine poets from B.C., including Patrick Lane, Kate Braid and Betsy Warland. Her work has appeared in literary publications and is included in numerous anthologies, edited by Patrick Lane since 2008, published by Leaf Press. See writing section for a full list of publications.

Tina has a long background in Theatre as an actor, playwright and performer/teacher of Commedia dell’Arte and emotional mask work. She has worked with students from high school through to University Theatre Departments as well as adults. She also performs her own work with these masks.

Read more at tinabiello.com

Named as one of Canada's ‘hot 30 classical musicians under 30’ by the Canadian Broadcasting Company; composer, improviser, and vocalist Katerina Gimon's uniquely dynamic, poignant, and eclectic compositional style is rapidly gaining her a reputation as one of the most distinctive emerging voices in contemporary Canadian composition. Katerina’s music has been described as “sheer radiance” (Campbell River Mirror), “imbued…with human emotion” (San Diego Story), and capable of taking listeners on a “fascinating journey of textural discovery” (Ludwig Van). Her works have been performed across Canada, the United States, and Europe at prominent events such as ACDA Conferences (National and Regional), Choral Canada’s Podium Conference, and as part of the Vancouver Opera Festival, as well as at renowned venues such as Carnegie Hall and the Orpheum Theatre. Recent commissions include new music for the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the University of Montana, Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound, the Hamilton Children’s Choir, and the Orpheus Choir of Toronto. She is currently the composer-in-residence for female vocal ensemble Myriad and is primarily based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Read more at katerinagimon.com

Johann Sebastian Bach, (31 March [O.S. 21 March] 1685 – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. He is known for instrumental compositions such as the Art of Fugue, the Brandenburg Concertos, and the Goldberg Variations as well as for vocal music such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Bach Revival he has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time.

The Bach family already counted several composers when Johann Sebastian was born as the last child of a city musician in Eisenach. After becoming an orphan at age 10, he lived for five years with his eldest brother Johann Christoph Bach, after which he continued his musical development in Lüneburg. From 1703 he was back in Thuringia, working as a musician for Protestant churches in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen and, for longer stretches of time, at courts in Weimar—where he expanded his repertoire for the organ—and Köthen—where he was mostly engaged with chamber music. From 1723 he was employed as Thomaskantor (cantor at St. Thomas) in Leipzig. He composed music for the principal Lutheran churches of the city, and for its university's student ensemble Collegium Musicum. From 1726 he published some of his keyboard and organ music. In Leipzig, as had happened in some of his earlier positions, he had a difficult relation with his employer, a situation that was little remedied when he was granted the title of court composer by King Augustus III of Poland in 1736. In the last decades of his life he reworked and extended many of his earlier compositions. He died of complications after eye surgery in 1750 at the age of 65.

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The Brandenburg Concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach (BWV 1046–1051, original title: Six Concerts à plusieurs instruments) are a collection of six instrumental works presented by Bach to Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt, in 1721 (though probably composed earlier). They are widely regarded as some of the best orchestral compositions of the Baroque era.

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791), baptised as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the classical era.

Born in Salzburg, Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. At 17, Mozart was engaged as a musician at the Salzburg court but grew restless and traveled in search of a better position. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and portions of the Requiem, which was largely unfinished at the time of his early death at the age of 35. The circumstances of his death have been much mythologized.

He composed more than 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers, and his influence is profound on subsequent Western art music. Ludwig van Beethoven composed his own early works in the shadow of Mozart, and Joseph Haydn wrote: "posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years".

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Salzburg-era symphonies (1771–1777)

These symphonies are sometimes subcategorized as "Early" (1771–1773) and "Late" (1773–1777), and sometimes subcategorized as "Germanic" (with minuet) or "Italian" (without minuet). None of these were printed during Mozart's lifetime.

Although not counted as "symphonies" the three Divertimenti K. 136–138, in 3-movement Italian overture style, are sometimes indicated as "Salzburg Symphonies" too.

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Dory Hayley, soprano
Praised for her “very personal creative power” (Badener Zeitung) and her “amazing coloratura skills” (Opera Canada), Dory Hayley has been a soloist with the Vancouver Symphony, the Bourgas Symphony, the Allegra Chamber Orchestra, the Turning Point Ensemble, and Capriccio Basel, and has appeared in recital in Europe, Asia, and North and South America. She has performed in festivals such as Sonic Boom, the Happening Festival, Gulangyu Piano Festival, Performer’s Voice Symposium, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, and the Atempo Festival of Caracas, and with organizations like the SMCQ, Chants Libres, CIRMMT, Codes d’accès, Vancouver New Music, the Little Chamber Music Series That Could, and the Land’s End Ensemble. She is a member of the Erato Ensemble, the Broadwood Duo, and the Hayley-Laufer Duo.
An enthusiastic performer of contemporary music, Dory has worked with composers such as Helmut Lachenmann, Georges Aperghis, Diógenes Rivas, Owen Underhill, and Jordan Nobles, and created roles in Mark Haney’s Omnis Temporalis and Michael James Park’s Diagnosis Diabetes.
A former Visiting Scholar at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute, Visiting Artist at University at Buffalo’s Creative Arts Initiative, and Visiting Faculty Artist at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, she currently teaches at Vancouver Community College. She is the Artistic Co-Director of the Blueridge Chamber Music Festival.
Dory pursued vocal studies at McGill University, the University of British Columbia, and the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien, and has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Koerner Foundation, the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada, and the Conseil des arts et des letters du Québec. She holds a Doctor of Music degree from Université de Montréal.

Read more at doryhayley.com

A soprano is a type of classical singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C₄) = 261 Hz to "high A" (A₅) = 880 Hz in choral music, or to "soprano C" (C₆, two octaves above middle C) = 1046 Hz or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which often encompasses the melody. The soprano voice type is generally divided into the coloratura, soubrette, lyric, spinto, and dramatic soprano.

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