My Account≈ 2 hours · With intermission
Last updated: September 16, 2019
Tonight’s soloists for Peer Gynt – Carmen Harris, Lynlee Wolstencroft and Ryan Hofman – are all graduates of the Master of Music vocal performance program at the University of Ottawa.
Chorus
Choristers from:
Ewashko Singers (ES)
Ensemble Calixa-Lavallée (CL)
Rehearsal Pianist: Claire Stevens
Soprano
Michelle Bawden CL
Ashley Bedard ES
Anastasiya Gorodnicha CL
Alison Kennedy ES
Ilene McKenna ES
Rosemary Cairns Way ES
Alto
Barb Ackison ES
Donna Ager ES
Wanda Allard ES
Shelly Arturo ES
Elizabeth Burbidge ES
Rachel Hotte ES
Caroline Johnston ES
Chloe Monette CL
Rebecca Taves ES
Tenor
Johnathan Bentley ES
David Lafranchise ES
Bryan Parker ES
Robert Ryan ES
Ryan Tonelli CL
Bass
Grant Cameron ES
Alain Franchomme ES
Braeden Kloke ES
James Kubina ES
Kevin Marimbu CL
Mathieu Jean Roy CL
Kyle Simpson CL
Stephen Slessor ES
Christopher Yordy ES
Repertoire
Ambe
Now living in Winnipeg, Manitoba
Of Cree descent, Andrew Balfour is an innovative composer/conductor/singer/sound designer with a large body of choral, instrumental, electro-acoustic and orchestral works, including Take the Indian (a vocal reflection on missing children), Empire Étrange: The Death of Louis Riel, Bawajigaywin (Vision Quest) and Manitou Sky, an orchestral tone poem. His new Indigenous opera, Mishabooz’s Realm, was commissioned by the Atelier Lyrique de l’Opéra de Montréal and Highlands Opera Workshop.
The founder and Artistic Director of the vocal group Camerata Nova, now in its 22nd year of offering a concert series in Winnipeg, Balfour specializes in creating “concept concerts,” many with Indigenous subject matter. These innovative offerings explore a theme through an eclectic array of music, including new works, arrangements and innovative inter-genre and interdisciplinary collaborations.
He has become increasingly passionate about music education and outreach, par-ticularly on northern reserves and in inner-city Winnipeg schools where he has worked on behalf of the National Arts Centre, Camerata Nova, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and various Winnipeg school divisions.
In 2007, Andrew Balfour received the Mayor of Winnipeg’s “Making a Mark” Award, sponsored by the Winnipeg Arts Council to recognize the most promising midcareer artist in the city.
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This piece, Ambe, is based on an original song in Ojibway that was gifted by traditional drummer and singer Cory Campbell to Andrew Balfour and the University of Man-itoba Concert Choir. Campbell describes the song as “a call to the people to the ceremonial way of life or to the red road or, quite frankly, to whatever we have going on, because everything happens with spirit and in spirit.”
Inspired by Campbell’s song, Balfour created an original composition which uses the same text and echoes the steady rhythm of the drum, unifying the piece. The melodies are all original but hints of Campbell’s song remain. For Balfour, the steady beat throughout represents the heartbeat of Mother Earth, and the lyrical first soprano melody that emerges from this rhythmic texture at measure seven conveys the power-ful totem of the eagle which represents the teaching of love, wisdom and strength.
– Program note by Andrew Balfour
Dodo, mon tout petit*
Commissioned by the National Arts Centre and the Canadian Opera Company
Born in Midland, Ontario, August 24, 1981
Now living in Oakville, Ontario
Ian Cusson is a composer of art song, opera and orchestral work. Of Métis and French-Canadian descent, his work explores Canadian Indigenous experience including the history of the Métis people, the hybridity of mixed-racial identity, and the intersection of Western and Indigenous cultures. He studied composition with Jake Heggie (San Francisco) and Samuel Dolin, and piano with James Anagnoson at the Glenn Gould School. He was also mentored by Johannes Debus.
Cusson is the recipient of the Chalmers Professional Development Grant, the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation Award, and grants through the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council. He was an inaugural Carrefour Composer with the National Arts Centre Orchestra from 2017–2019 and is Composer-in-Residence with the Canadian Opera Company for 2019–2021. He is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre and a member of the Canadian League of Composers. He lives in Oakville with his wife and four children.
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The NAC and Canadian Opera Company commissioned this new aria to replace the Kuyas aria that opens Act III of Harry Somers and Mavor Moore’s 1967 opera Louis Riel. The music for the original scene used a song from the Nisga’a people without permission. This new aria will have a permanent place in all future productions of the opera.
Participating in the composition of new music for this opera is about more than the composition itself. It is an opportunity to be part of the righting of an historic wrong, where an appropriated song is returned to its people. It is a tangible step in the direction of reconciliation.
The task of writing new music for a work like Louis Riel, often described as Canada’s most important opera, is not as straightforward as it might seem. It requires sober awareness of the expectations and criticism surrounding such a task. How does a person go about creating new music for an opera that has a history of divided public opinion and more than half a century of scholarly commentary?
I turned to the drama itself in order to dis-cover the path forward by considering the function of the scene in which the aria is found to the opera as a whole. The goal I set for myself was to capture the tone that this moment required.
Act III opens with Marguerite, the young wife of Louis Riel, singing their child to sleep. She sings of her hopes and dreams for the child – that he would have the legs of a deer to carry him across the prairies, the wings of an eagle, the heart of a man, the wisdom of the stars… This most intimate and personal moment is the heart of the opera. Its musical setting required a degree of simplicity and musical clarity, a pause before the opera’s climax where Riel returns to Canada to lead his people in a rebellion, ending in his execution by the Canadian state.
Giving voice to an historic person from my own community is a special thing. It is a looking back across time and generations. But it is also a looking forward to future generations of Indigenous people of this land. I write this work for all my relations.
– Program note by Ian Cusson
Zasakwaa (There is a Heavy Frost)
Born in Mnidoo Mnissing, 1966, Giniw dodem (golden eagle clan)
Now living in Mnidoo Mnissing and Halton, Ontario
Active internationally since 1995, Odawa First Nation composer Barbara Croall has had commissions and performances from leading orchestras, ensembles and soloists across Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Europe, Latin America and Asia. As a musician, she plays, performs and composes on the pipigwan and for voice in the traditional Anishinaabe way. Classically-trained, she holds music degrees and diplomas from Centre Acanthes (France), the Musikhochschule in Munich (Germany), the Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto) and the University of Toronto. The child of a residential school survivor, Croall is also a direct descendant of hereditary chiefs who signed the major treaties in Ontario and who fought in major battles of the Indian Wars and War of 1812.
Recording credits of her music and per-formances include: CBC Radio One, CBC Radio Two, Bayerische Rundfunk-Bayern 3, Deutsche Radio Swiss (DRS-II), Radio France, Italian National Television, APTN (Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, Canada) and Kennedy Center Live Broadcasts (Washington, D.C.).
Awards include the Glenn Gould Award in Composition (1989), numerous scholarships at the Royal Conservatory of Music/Glenn Gould School (1992–1996), awards from the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation (1993–1998), three nominations for the K.M. Hunter Award (2003, 2007, 2012), a Visual and Expressive Arts Program Award (National Museum of the American Indian, 2009) and a Dora Mavor Award nomination (2012).
Croall is also the Founder and Director of Women of the Four Directions (WFD), promoting Indigenous women’s artistic and cultural activities. She has also served as an Advisory Board Member of the First Nations Composers’ Initiative (FNCI). She is currently Artist-in-Residence and Cultural Consultant with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra.
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This work for chamber string orchestra and mezzo-soprano, with flute soloist, greets the coming of winter from a female earth spirit perspective. In Nishnaabe (Odawa) cosmology we have Mindemoyenh (Old Woman) who is featured in our oral stories as an earth-rooted figure representing ancient feminine knowledge and guidance. On Mnidoo Mnissing (Manitoulin Island) as a child I swam so many countless times in the beautiful Lake Mindemoya, which is noted for its extended shallows and rippled sands on the eastern side and which has a large island that the Nishnaabeg have called Mindemoyenh – appearing like an old woman lying on her back surrounded by calm water. (Settlers renamed this island Treasure Island.) Many feel that she was the first ancient woman emerging out of the earth and rock as a guardian spirit when Mnidoo Mnissing was first formed. In fall, as the first heavy frosts arrive just before winter, a tranquil sense of calm is felt when this female island becomes immobilized by the ice and blanketed by snow drifts as many earth creatures enter their deep sleep for biboon (winter).
The mezzo-soprano soloist is this ancient female island spirit, also recalling her own grandmother, Nookomis, the moon, who watches over all girls and women who celebrate and honour her in our Full Moon ceremonies. The flute soloist is a transformational figure – often depicting the cold winds and elemental spirit breath of life, as well as Bineshiinh (Small bird) who stays to keep Mindemoyenh company through the fall and winter – singing to her cheerfully to provide comfort and hope during her times of winter loneliness. The calls of Gookooko’oo (Owl) heard as Mindemoyenh finally slips into winter slumber are also a reminder of another protective guardian spirit, the owl, who watches over those who sleep and hunts with silent wings under the cloak of night and illumination of moonlight.
– Program note by Barbara Croall
Peer Gynt
Born in Bergen, June 15, 1843
Died in Bergen, September 4, 1907
The sights, sounds and folklore of Norway are deeply embedded in Grieg’s music, nowhere more so than in the incidental music he wrote for Henrik Ibsen’s poetic drama Peer Gynt (1867). Ibsen (1828–1906), Norway’s most famous playwright, initially had no intention of producing his huge play, more suitable for reading than for acting, with its elements of Norwegian fairy-tale, fantasy, satire and allegory. Eventually he changed his mind and asked Grieg to provide music for the production, which was first given on February 24, 1876 in Christiania (present-day Oslo). For revivals in Copenhagen (1885, 1892) and Christiania (1902), Grieg composed additional numbers.
What we hear tonight constitutes a generous, one-hour sequence of about two-thirds of the complete incidental music to Peer Gynt, including all eight numbers of the two popular suites plus assorted other material that involves chorus, narration and vocal soloists. Listeners familiar with the two suites will note that some of these numbers too involve vocal elements in their original form. Ibsen’s play relates the adventures of an egotist and all-around irresponsible, unpleasant character who leaves his home-land to roam the world in a restless search for happiness, his churlish behaviour earning him the contempt of everyone he encounters.
The story begins at a wedding party. Peer shows his true colours almost from the start, as he abducts the bride but soon abandons her. Soon afterwards we meet the herd girls, an unruly lot clamouring for their lost lovers (trolls), whereupon Peer offers his services as a lover to all of them. Peer next appears in the hall of the Mountain King, where hideous little trolls, representing man’s more undesirable qualities, chase and torment Peer. The Mountain King’s daughter is no beauty, and her ungainly dance drives Peer to mirth. In anger, the Mountain King sets his army of trolls upon Peer, a truly frightening scene.
After years of wandering, Peer returns home for the death of his loving mother Åse, who dies in his arms. This sorrowful scene, scored for strings alone, is built on the barest of musical materials, a rising three-note motif. Further travels take Peer to North Africa. “Morning Mood” depicts the idyllic beauty and stillness of sunrise over the desert. Peer is entertained by a bevy of beauties in the “Arabian Dance,” and later by Anitra alone, the chieftain's daughter. Peer woos Anitra in his serenade, the sole occasion in the play where the actor taking this role must sing. Solveig, Peer’s only true love, sings of her confidence that Peer will one day return to her waiting arms.
Eventually he returns to Norway for the last time, amidst stormy weather that is surely a metaphor for his troubled soul. He finds solace and forgiveness in Solveig’s arms as she sings the last music in the score, the infinitely tender and consoling “Cradle Song.”
– Program notes by Robert Markow
Alexander Shelley
Alexander Shelley succeeded Pinchas Zukerman as Music Director of Canada’s NAC Orchestra in September 2015. The ensemble has since been praised as being “transformed… hungry, bold, and unleashed” (Ottawa Citizen) and Shelley’s programming credited for turning the orchestra into “one of the more audacious in North America” (Maclean’s).
Shelley is a champion of Canadian creation; recent hallmarks include the multimedia project Life Reflected, and three major new ballets in partnership with NAC Dance for Encount3rs. He and the NAC Orchestra have made four recordings with Montreal label Analekta: Life Reflected, ENCOUNT3RS, the JUNO-nominated New Worlds and The Bounds of Our Dreams.
He is passionate about arts education and nurturing the next generation of musi-cians. He is an Ambassador for Ottawa’s OrKidstra, a charitable social development program that teaches children life skills through making music together.
Alexander Shelley is also the Principal Associate Conductor of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He recently led a tour of Germany and South Africa with the German National Youth Orchestra, and in the spring of 2019, he led the NAC Orchestra on its critically acclaimed 50th Anniversary European tour, with stops including London, Paris, Stockholm and Copenhagen.
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The Music Director role is supported by Elinor Gill Ratcliffe, C.M., O.N.L., LL.D. (hc)
Joanna G’froerer
Joanna G’froerer enjoys an exciting career as an orchestral player, chamber musician, soloist and educator. She has been principal flute of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra since 1992, winning the audition at the age of 20. A native of Vancouver, she comes from a family of professional musicians. She studied flute in Vancouver with Kathleen Rudolph, and at McGill University with Timothy Hutchins.
G’froerer performs regularly as a soloist with the NAC Orchestra, and with many of Canada’s other fine orchestras and ensembles. She was the first prize-winner (winds and brass) of the Montreal Symphony Competition in 1990.
Joanna G’froerer has been featured in the chamber music festivals of Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa, as well as at the Scotia Festival and Brazil’s Campos do Jordão Festival. Her discography includes recordings of Mozart’s flute quartets, Rodrigo's flute concerto, and the chamber music for winds by Saint-Saëns.
She has taught flute at the University of Ottawa, the NAC Summer Music Institute, Domaine Forget and the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, and is presently a visiting Professor of Flute at McGill University in Montreal.
Melody Courage
Vancouver-based Métis soprano Melody Courage gained national attention as The Native Girl “…played with ethereal grace by coloratura soprano Melody Courage” (Roberta Staley, The Wholenote) in the 2017 world premiere of Marie Clements and Brian Current’s opera Missing, co-produced by City Opera Vancouver and Pacific Opera Victoria. Missing gives voice, in English and Gitxsan, to the story of Canada’s missing and murdered Indigenous women. Courage is of Cree, Dene and Chipewyan descent.
In demand by composers of new works, she recently performed in the premiere of Heart of the North (Neil Weisensel, Suzanne Steele) with the Regina Symphony Orchestra. In addition to new works, she has performed several roles with Vancouver Opera including First Lady (Die Zauberflöte) and Rosalinde (Die Fledermaus) with Vancouver Academy of Music.
She made her debut with the NAC Orchestra in 2004, and is honoured to return to the NAC tonight to sing in the world premiere of Ian Cusson’s new work, Dodo, mon tout petit.
This season, Courage stars in Two Odysseys: Pimooteewin/Gállábártnit pre-sented by Toronto’s Soundstreams Canada and Signal Theatre. These two operas, sung in Cree and Sámi, are rooted in traditional tales from Canada and Nordic countries.
Marion Newman
Kwagiulth and Stó:lō First Nations, English, Irish and Scottish mezzo-soprano Marion Newman is firmly established as one of Canada’s most accomplished singers in works ranging from Vivaldi to Vivier. Noted for her “sumptuous mezzo tone and impressive vocal agility” (Chrissy Steinbock, apt613.ca), her operatic roles include Carmen, and Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia.
She has performed in many world premieres of operas and chamber works that speak to her First Nations identity, including the role of Dr. Wilson in Missing (Clements/Current) with City Opera Vancouver/Pacific Opera Victoria, Ancestral Voices (Tovey) with the Vancouver Symphony (which they performed on tour at the NAC in 2018), Anna Höstman’s Singing the Earth with the Victoria Symphony and Ian Cusson’s orchestral setting of poems by Marilyn Dumont with the Regina Symphony Orchestra.
Recent highlights include Messiah with Symphony Nova Scotia, the Mother in Hansel and Gretel with Edmonton Opera, and the title role in Tapestry Opera/Opera on the Avalon’s co-production of Shanawdithit (Burry/Nolan).
This season, Marion Newman appears with Pacific Opera Victoria as the Abbess in Suor Angelica, reprises her starring role of Tsianina Redfeather in Jani Lauzon’s I Call Myself Princess with Regina’s Globe Theatre, tours Western Canada as Dr. Wilson in Missing and is a guest soloist in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Kingston Symphony.
Tom Jackson
There are entertainment legends, and then there is Tom Jackson: a triple-threat actor, musician, and activist whose achievements in each discipline are downright head-spinning. His career is unparalleled, not to mention wildly acclaimed, abundantly decorated, and almost ridiculously interesting.
At an age when most are pulling back, the 70-year-old Calgary-based star is barreling towards the busiest and most glittering chapter in his towering 40-odd-year run at the forefront of contemporary film, TV and music. As an actor, his many small- and big-screen parts have leveraged his Indigenous heritage for their dynamic characters; while others have employed his mellifluous tones for voiceovers. He is known for TV shows like North of 60, Shining Time Station, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Law & Order, with guest roles in Outlander (season 4), Cardinal (season 3) and Red Earth Uncovered (season 2); and in film, has acted alongside Liam Neeson, Eric Bana, Olivia Wilde, Kris Kristofferson and Sissy Spacek, to name a few.
2018 marked the release of The Essential Tom Jackson, his two-disc, 21-track retro-spective spotlighting his inimitable talent as a folk-pop singer/songwriter of the highest order and an artist intrinsically linked to the world around him, both the real and the ethereal.
Tom Jackson is currently an Ambassador for the Red Cross, has been inducted as an Officer of the Order of Canada (2000), and received the 2007 Juno Humanitarian Award. In 2014, he was honoured with the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement.
Laurence Ewashko
Former conductor of the Vienna Boys’ Choir and Cantata Singers of Ottawa, Laurence Ewashko celebrates his 32nd season of choral activity in the National Capital Region. As a choral clinician, vocal coach and adjudicator, he makes a significant contribution to the quality and appreciation of vocal music in Canada and abroad. Laurence has prepared choruses for many prestigious conductors, and he regularly does so at the National Arts Centre. A Full Professor of Choral Studies at the University of Ottawa, he conducts the School of Music’s two choirs. Laurence is a recipient of the prestigious Leslie Bell Prize for Choral Conducting and numerous awards from the Canada Council of the Arts.
Ewashko Singers
Laurence Ewashko, artistic director
In addition to their own concert series, the Ewashko Singers regularly collaborate with Ensemble Calixa-Lavallée for performances with the NAC Orchestra. This past year included performances with the NAC Orchestra in their Pops series, Britten’s War Requiem, Handel’s Messiah plus a concert version of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. Tonight’s performance of Grieg’s Peer Gynt featuring soloists from the University of Ottawa School of Music launches a new exciting choral season which will conclude next summer with the fully-staged opera Ours by John Estacio, in collaboration with Opera on the Avalon (Newfoundland).
As a choral clinician, vocal coach and adjudicator, Laurence Ewashko makes a significant contribution to the quality and appreciation of vocal music in Canada and abroad. He regularly prepares choruses for performances at the NAC and he conducted Opera Lyra Ottawa’s chorus from 1988 to 2015. He is a Full Professor at the University of Ottawa’s School of Music where he conducts the school’s two choirs and has been chorus master and vocal coach for the Banff Centre for the Arts. Ewashko is a recipient of the prestigious Leslie Bell Prize for Choral Conducting.
Calixa-Lavallée Ensemble
Laurence Ewashko, music director
The Ensemble Calixa-Lavallée is the premier chamber choir of the University of Ottawa’s (U of O) School of Music. Directed by Laurence Ewashko, the ensemble performs regularly throughout the school year in a variety of concerts, both at the university and within the community at large.
The women of the choir sang in the NAC Orchestra’s production of Mendelssohn's A Midsummer’s Night Dream with Colm Feore in 2014. In March 2017, the choir presented a concert dedicated to Canada’s sesquicentennial, and last March they participated in the University of Ottawa Orchestra’s performance of Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang. In January 2020, they will be featured in Scriabin’s Symphony No. 1 with the U of O Orchestra.
Andrew Balfour
Now living in Winnipeg, Manitoba
Of Cree descent, Andrew Balfour is an innovative composer/conductor/singer/sound designer with a large body of choral, instrumental, electro-acoustic and orchestral works, including Take the Indian (a vocal reflection on missing children), Empire Étrange: The Death of Louis Riel, Bawajigaywin (Vision Quest) and Manitou Sky, an orchestral tone poem. His new Indigenous opera, Mishabooz’s Realm, was commissioned by the Atelier Lyrique de l’Opéra de Montréal and Highlands Opera Workshop.
The founder and Artistic Director of the vocal group Camerata Nova, now in its 22nd year of offering a concert series in Winnipeg, Balfour specializes in creating “concept concerts,” many with Indigenous subject matter. These innovative offerings explore a theme through an eclectic array of music, including new works, arrangements and innovative inter-genre and interdisciplinary collaborations.
He has become increasingly passionate about music education and outreach, par-ticularly on northern reserves and in inner-city Winnipeg schools where he has worked on behalf of the National Arts Centre, Camerata Nova, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and various Winnipeg school divisions.
In 2007, Andrew Balfour received the Mayor of Winnipeg’s “Making a Mark” Award, sponsored by the Winnipeg Arts Council to recognize the most promising midcareer artist in the city.
Ian Cusson
Born in Midland, Ontario, August 24, 1981
Now living in Oakville, Ontario
Ian Cusson is a composer of art song, opera and orchestral work. Of Métis and French-Canadian descent, his work explores Canadian Indigenous experience including the history of the Métis people, the hybridity of mixed-racial identity, and the intersection of Western and Indigenous cultures. He studied composition with Jake Heggie (San Francisco) and Samuel Dolin, and piano with James Anagnoson at the Glenn Gould School. He was also mentored by Johannes Debus.
Cusson is the recipient of the Chalmers Professional Development Grant, the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation Award, and grants through the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council. He was an inaugural Carrefour Composer with the National Arts Centre Orchestra from 2017–2019 and is Composer-in-Residence with the Canadian Opera Company for 2019–2021. He is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre and a member of the Canadian League of Composers. He lives in Oakville with his wife and four children.
Barbara Assiginaak
Born in Mnidoo Mnissing, 1966, Giniw dodem (golden eagle clan)
Now living in Mnidoo Mnissing and Halton, Ontario
Active internationally since 1995, Odawa First Nation composer Barbara Croall has had commissions and performances from leading orchestras, ensembles and soloists across Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Europe, Latin America and Asia. As a musician, she plays, performs and composes on the pipigwan and for voice in the traditional Anishinaabe way. Classically-trained, she holds music degrees and diplomas from Centre Acanthes (France), the Musikhochschule in Munich (Germany), the Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto) and the University of Toronto. The child of a residential school survivor, Croall is also a direct descendant of hereditary chiefs who signed the major treaties in Ontario and who fought in major battles of the Indian Wars and War of 1812.
Recording credits of her music and per-formances include: CBC Radio One, CBC Radio Two, Bayerische Rundfunk-Bayern 3, Deutsche Radio Swiss (DRS-II), Radio France, Italian National Television, APTN (Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, Canada) and Kennedy Center Live Broadcasts (Washington, D.C.).
Awards include the Glenn Gould Award in Composition (1989), numerous scholarships at the Royal Conservatory of Music/Glenn Gould School (1992–1996), awards from the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation (1993–1998), three nominations for the K.M. Hunter Award (2003, 2007, 2012), a Visual and Expressive Arts Program Award (National Museum of the American Indian, 2009) and a Dora Mavor Award nomination (2012).
Croall is also the Founder and Director of Women of the Four Directions (WFD), promoting Indigenous women’s artistic and cultural activities. She has also served as an Advisory Board Member of the First Nations Composers’ Initiative (FNCI). She is currently Artist-in-Residence and Cultural Consultant with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra.
Tobi Hunt McCoy
Tobi Hunt McCoy is enjoying another year as Season Stage Manager with the National Arts Centre Orchestra. In past seasons, McCoy stage managed the Lord of the Rings Symphony, Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Christopher Plummer in 2001 and Colm Feore in 2014, and much of the Orchestra’s educational and Pops programming. In 2014, she co-produced the Pops show On the Air with Jack Everly for the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, a show they produced in 2007 for the NAC Orchestra.
Additional professional duties have inclu-ded cheering on Luke and Princess Leia with Charlie Ross, Émilie Fournier and Erik Ochsner during the Star Wars Pops concert; dressing up in 1980’s finery for All Night Long – Music of the 80s; bracing the backstage doors against the almighty power of Richard Strauss, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the air conditioning system at Montreal’s La Maison Symphonique; providing air-guitar support during the Led Zeppelin tribute concert; and duck wrangling for the Mysterioso Pops concert.
She is excited to be back teaching English and Drama at Lisgar Collegiate.
