The 2011 Yorkton Music Festival is underway in the city, adjudicators hard at work deciding on the best of the best.
The festival will continue until April 3, culminating in a special Hi-Lites Competition at the Anne Portnuff Theatre beginning at 2 p.m.
Following are details on each of the six adjudicators.
GAYE-LYNN KERN (voice) is a teacher, performer, and clinician. She has enjoyed adjudicating at over 100 festivals in Western Canada since 1990. Her areas of specialization are: voice, music theatre and speech arts.
Twelve of her twenty-eight years of vocal pedagogy have been at universities and colleges where she has taught for both music and drama departments and her students are frequent festival scholarship winners at both local and provincial levels.
Kern has a Master of Music (Voice) and a post graduate diploma from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, England, with post-graduate studies at the Mozart Opera Studies Institute. She has performed professionally in England, the United States, as well as in Canada in twenty-seven leading roles in opera.
Most recently she performed Elizabeth Raum's Prairie Alpha bet with the Saskatoon Symphony Chamber Orchestra. She currently performs as a member of the Gala Trio.She currently resides in Saskatoon, with her husband and daughter.
SARAH KONECSNI (piano) is known throughout the province as pianist, clinician, adjudicator, composer, accompanist, teacher, and as an examiner for the Royal Conservatory of Music (with 25 of her students receiving silver medals for the highest marks in piano examinations in every grade from Preparatory A through Grade 10 RCM).
A recipient of nearly all awards for piano performance provincially, including soloist with the Regina Symphony Orchestra; she was the Young Artist for Western Canada and performed ten concerts from BC to Manitoba; and was a winner of five provincial classes and the St. Geraldine Boyle award for the most outstanding competitor of the Provincial Finals in 1994.
In 2003, she was awarded a grant from the Saskatchewan Arts Board to present a series of seven concerts throughout Saskatchewan to present her compositions to the public. She was also the winner of the 'Call for Compositions' national competition for a piano piece for Canada Music Week 2009.
She has one son and lives on an acreage south of Regina, with her husband Lee, and their two beautiful dogs.
ANDREE DAGENAIS (choir) associate professor at Brandon University where she conducts the Brandon University Chorale, the Brandon Concert Choir and the Brandon University Women's Voices.
Under her direction BU Chorale performed in Cuba, toured Saskatchewan in 2008 and France in 2007 for a choir exchange with the Ensemble vocal of l'Université de Poitiers. She holds a doctorate from University of Iowa.
She is presently Vice-President for Professional Development for the Canadian Association of Choral Communities (ACCC). Andrée has been co-chair with Henry Schellenberg of the Programming Committee for Podium 2004 in Winnipeg. She has been invited to Venezuela three times to conduct workshops and be part of the choral competition jury for the VIII Edición del Festival Internacional D'canto. She taught several times for the Alliance des Chorales du Québec's summer conducting workshop.
She returns to Québec regularly to conduct at CAMMAC, the music center of the Canadian Amateur Musician, Musicien Amateur Canadien.
GREG MCLEAN (bands and ensembles) has recently retired after 35 years of public school music education, the last 21 years at the Swift Current Comprehensive High School, where he was the music director for 150 instrumental students in grades 9-12.
Under Mr. McLean's direction, the Senior Wind Orchestra and Senior Jazz Ensemble received many awards.
In 2001 he received the "Paul Harris Fellowship" from the Swift Current Rotary Club for outstanding leadership and community work with young people. He was the recipient of the "Outstanding Achievement Award" presented by the Saskatchewan Music Educator's Association in 2006.
McLean received his Bachelor of Music degree from Brandon University. His graduate work included courses at Brandon University in music education and jazz, a Graduate Diploma of Fine Arts from the University of Calgary in conducting and wind repertoire, and more recently a Master of Music degree in conducting from the University of Manitoba.
He is a full-time faculty member of the "Prairieland Summer Jazz Camp" in Regina and has been guest conductor and brass coach at Saskatchewan summer band camps for twenty-five years. McLean is frequently invited to adjudicate at festivals, to conduct at workshops and reading sessions, and to direct honour groups.
WAYNE TOEWS (band, woodwinds, strings, guitar) began to study the violin at the age of 4. He sang with the Westmount Boys Choir under Donald Forbes and served as concertmaster of the Saskatoon Youth Orchestra.
He studied violin and composition with Dr. Murray Adaskin at the University of Saskatchewan where he received B.A. and B.Ed. degrees.
He played for nine seasons in the Saskatoon Symphony, first on violin and later on viola. He holds a Master of Music degree from Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.
Toews taught music in Saskatoon public schools from 1969 until retirement in 2001. From 1983 until 2009, he was director of the Saskatoon Youth Orchestra. The orchestra won the Canadian Music Educators' Association's national performance award for excellence six successive times and held the award from 1993 until 2005.
After studying conducting at the Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo in 1983, he edited the English edition of the Saito Conducting Method textbook that was published in Tokyo in 1988.
In 2005 he founded ConductorSchool and has helped more than 100 students from around the world learn the Saito conducting method.
He received the "Outstanding Achievement Award" from Saskatchewan Music Educators Association in 1987, the "Golden Wheel Award for Excellence in Arts and Education" from the Rotary Clubs of Saskatoon in 1990, the "Orchestral Development Award" from the Saskatchewan Orchestral Association in 2001 and the 2009 "Outstanding Band Director Award" from the Saskatchewan Band Association.
He lives in Saskatoon with his wife Judy.
ROBERT GIBSON (band, brass, percussion) comes from the Lake District in the north of England. His early studies in music included piano, voice, and several wind instruments. He served as a military musician in the band of the Border Regiment in both England and Germany and, while in Germany, studied with Horst Hergut, former principal trombonist with the Berlin Philharmonic, and the Carlottenburg Opera House.
He was a member of various choral societies in England, and directed bands for the Lancashire Department of Education. He holds the Associate Diploma in trombone from Victoria College of Music, London.
After coming to Canada in 1965, he directed the Prince Albert Lions Bands for ten years and also directed bands in the public school system.
Gibson received B.Mus. (Mus. Ed.) and B.A. degrees from the University of Saskatchewan and taught at Carlton Comprehensive High School in Prince Albert for seventeen years in the areas of Fine Arts and English. He has adjudicated at Unifest in Saskatoon and at various music festivals around the province.
He has directed several community groups and, most recently, the Prince Albert City Band and the Prince Albert Men's Chorus. Retired since 1997, he does a lot of arranging for the band and chorus and also for the Millennium Swing Orchestra, in which he plays trombone.
* Programs for the Yorkton Music Festival are available at Fuzztone Music.
