Pianist, Karen Lee-Morlang

Karen Lee-Morlang, piano

An award-winning performer, educator and producer, pianist Karen Lee-Morlang has been lauded as "funny, brainy and creative."  After specializing in art song and chamber music for her post-graduate degree from UBC, she then taught as a Sessional Lecturer there while continuing her own education and performing in different parts of North America, Europe and Asia.  Locally, Karen has championed music in BC with dedicated passion for over two decades, co-producing recital and lecture series for organizations such as the Vancouver Art Gallery, UBC Main Library, Vancouver Opera, the Vancouver Public Library, and CBC Radio.  As a performer, Karen has been featured at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, MusicFest Vancouver, the World Peace Forum, Women's Worlds Conference, the Vancouver Folk Festival and has been broadcast on CBC Radio. In addition to playing and touring with many different musicians and ensembles, Karen is a founding member of The Lady Larks, The No Sh!t Shirleys, and has played for choirs including Chor Leoni, The Vancouver Welsh Men’s Choir, BC Girls Honour Choir and others.  Karen is especially committed to her role as the Artistic Director of Health Arts Society of BC, which curates and delivers over 700 professional music and theatre performances annually for elders living in health care and retirement communities.  Karen also takes great pleasure in pursuing other passions such as riding her motorcycle, boating, fishing, reading, fussing over her succulent plants and now learning to coordinate her lower limbs in the form of tap dancing. 

Guest Poet, Aislinn Hunter

We’re thrilled to announce that award winning poet and author, Aislinn Hunter will be the guest poet for Art Song Lab 2020.

For your chance to work with Aislinn, apply today.

Aislinn Hunter is an award-winning poet, novelist and writing teacher. She’s the author of seven highly acclaimed books: ‘Into the Early Hours,’ ‘The Possible Past,’ and ‘Linger, Still’ (poetry), ‘Stay’ and ‘The World Before Us’ (novels), ‘What’s Left Us’ (a story collection) and a book of non-essays on material culture and writing called ‘A Peepshow with Views of the Interior: Paratexts’. 

Her work has been adapted into music, dance, art and film forms including ‘Stay’ – a feature film based on the novel of the same name (directed by Wiebke von Carolsfeld and starring Taylor Schilling and Aidan Quinn) – which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2014, a song called ‘Romance of the Field’ written and sung by Veda Hille (and inspired by ‘The World Before Us’), and a dance performance choreographed by Anusha Fernando which premiered at the Chan Centre in 2016.

Aislinn identifies as a writer but she also works in academic contexts. She has undergraduate degrees in the history of art and creative writing (UVic BFA), graduate degrees in creative writing (UBC MFA) and writing and cultural politics (UEdinburgh MSc), and a PhD in English Literature (UEdinburgh) where she focused on material culture theory and the writer’s house/museum.

In 2018 Aislinn served as a Canadian War Artist working with Canadian and NATO forces undertaking live chemical, biological and radioactive weapons training. Her war artist video installation ‘A Word and A Body Are Not The Same’ will premiere at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa in February 2020.

Aislinn teaches part-time in the creative writing program at KPU and in the Writer’s Studio program at SFU. She has also served as a writer-in-residence at universities in Canada, England, and Australia. 

‘The Certainties’ – a novel about bearing witness and imaginative acts –  is due out in May 2020 with Knopf, Random House. 

Baritone, Steven Bélanger

An accomplished clarinetist and singer, baritone Steven Bélanger is a graduate of Queen’s University (BMus, BA) and McGill University (MMus). He has performed with ensembles of all sizes and genres across Canada including the Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal (SMAM), Les Violons du Roy and La Chapelle de Québec, Opéra de Montréal, VivaVoce, the Elmer Iseler Singers, the Canadian Chamber Choir and Arion Baroque Orchestra. He has appeared as soloist with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM), the McGill Baroque Orchestra, Voix Libres, Le Choeur du Vieux-Montreal, Les Grands Ballets canadiens de Montréal, the Kingston Symphony Orchestra, the Queen’s University Symphony Orchestra, the Quinte Symphony, the Grand River Chorus, Opera After Hours, the Victoria Baroque Players and the Prince George Symphony Orchestra.

Steven has appeared at music festivals across North America including the Montreal Baroque Festival, the Festival international de Lanaudière, the Montreal/New Music International Festival, Festival Vancouver, the Lamèque International Baroque Music Festival in New Brunswick and the Festival Internacional Cervantino in Mexico. He has participated in over a dozen recordings for such labels as Decca, ATMA, Naxos, Centrediscs and Grouse Records, and has recorded music for radio, television and the Cirque du Soleil.

Locally, Steven has performed as both soloist and ensemble singer with the Vancouver Chamber Choir, Early Music Vancouver, the Vancouver Cantata Singers, the Erato Ensemble, SummerChor, Laudate Singers and Stellaria. Recent engagements include the title role in Dido and Aeneas with Players & Singers and the first public workshop of Lloyd Burritt’s new opera, The Art of Camouflage, based on the memoir of Canadian writer Betsy Warland. Steven is currently the General Manager of the Vancouver Chamber Choir and is a featured artist on their newest recording of the music of Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer entitled The Love that Moves the Universe.

Soprano, Robyn Driedger-Klassen

At the age of sixteen, Robyn Driedger-Klassen discovered that singing came more naturally than her attempts on the piano at Bach Preludes and Fugues.  She won a few competitions in those early days and after a few years of dilly-dallying in other university programs, she decided that music was the only career for her so, she  undertook the voice performance program at UBC with vigour.

Robyn has done lots of performing in lots of places.  She loves the costumes and grandeur of opera and adores the personal and intimate side of recitals.

Several years ago, Robyn was hired by the Turning Point Ensemble to do a work for voice and ensemble by R Murray Schafer entitled Arcana.  Faced with singing Egyptian hieroglyphs, Robyn found herself first at a complete loss, but soon fully enjoyed unravelling the mysteries found on the page.  Schafer witnessed her successful performance and since then, Robyn has thrown herself whole-heartedly into performance of contemporary vocal repertoire.  Some of her favourites have been: a fully-staged performance of Libby Larsen’s Try Me Good King, the final words and letters of the wives of Henry VIII;  Kaaija Saariaho’s Lonh, for soprano and electronics that make lovely bird sounds; Jake Heggie’s At the Statue of Venus, a woman’s inner monologue as she waits for a blind date; Brian Current’s Inventory, a complicated piece about a woman’s relationship with shoes; David McIntyre’s On the Road to Moose Jaw, a soaring song about a prairie drive; Leslie Uyeda’s White Cat Blues, a set of songs written for her with poems by Lorna Crozier; and Perruqueries, a commissioned set of songs about wigs from the weird and wonderful minds of Jocelyn Morlock and Bill Richardson.  This is an exciting time to be working with North American composers and Robyn is thrilled to make their songs come alive. However, she will always make time to sing Mozart, Schubert or Richard Strauss!

Robyn is on the core faculty of the Vancouver International Song Institute, and is also pleasantly surprised to find herself Head of Voice at the Vancouver Academy of Music. Robyn loves books, geraniums, hikes, canoes, cups of tea and a clean house.  Robyn lives with her husband and two vocal critics under the age of five. She can bake a wicked loaf of bread and in recent times, has learned a considerable amount about monster trucks, fast cars and dinosaurs.

Pianist, Corey Hamm

Pianist Corey Hamm is establishing a unique musical profile performing widely in North America and in Asia as both soloist and chamber musician. His CD of Frederic Rzewski’s hour-long solo piano epic The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (Redshift Records)  won Spotify's Best Classical Recording 2014, and Best Classical Recording at the 2014 Western Canadian Music Awards. He has performed the work over 80 times and many more performances are to come in 2018,  the year of Rzewski’s 80th Birthday. Corey Hamm’s extensive work in the 1990s with  the great French composer Henri Dutilleux will  come to fruition in his plan to record Dutilleux’s complete works for solo piano and chamber with piano in the near future. Among his other recording plans is a soon-to-be-released CD of solo works written for him by Keith Hamel, Jocelyn Morlock, Jordan Nobles, Dorothy Chang, and  Scott Godin, a CD with Nu:BC, and two more CDs with PEP (Piano and Erhu Project). He recently performed two works on Jocelyn Morlock’s CD, on Redshift Records. 

Corey Hamm has commissioned, premiered and recorded over three hundred works by composers  from all over the world.  These commissions have been for solo piano, various chamber music formations as well as concerti. 

His most extensive collection of commissioned works includes over 70 pieces  for  PEP (Piano and Erhu Project) with whom he has toured China.  To date the composers for the project come from China, Canada, UK,  and the United States, and include Michael Finnissy, GAO Ping, Brian Cherney. The result is a new and flourishing catalogue of works for piano and erhu composed in the musical languages of the 21st century.  This combination of instruments bringing together two of the world’s great musical traditions,  now has a unique collection of works for Nicole Ge Li and Corey Hamm to draw from for audiences of the 21st century. They have released some of these works on their PEP CDs, Vols. 1 and 2 (Redshift TK437 and 440). Volume 2 was nominated for Best Classical Recording at the 2015 Western Canadian Music Awards. Volumes 3, 4 & 5 are in preparation for release in 2019. 

He has also commissioned  over 50 works for The Nu:BC  Collective and for  Hammerhead Consort  (two piano and two percussion).  As pianist for The Nu:BC Collective  he has released the critically acclaimed CD Beyond Shadows (Redshift TK432). As a founding member of Hammerhead Consort, he received the 1993 Sir Ernest Macmillan Memorial Foundation Chamber Music Award, and was winner of the 1992 National Chamber Music Competition. 

In recent years, Corey Hamm has studied, recorded and toured one of the great piano works of the last decades, Frederic Rzewski's monumental hour-long solo piano epic, The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (Redshift TK431). This work, made up of a theme and 36 variations, has been recorded by a small number of pianists including Marc-André Hamelin, Ursula Oppens,  and Stephen Drury. Frederic Rzewski received Corey Hamm’s interpretation as one of the finest to date. “Excellent! Bravo! This may be the best recording.” 

Corey Hamm premiered Dorothy Chang’s new PEP Double Concerto for erhu and piano soloists, Gateways, with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (VSO) in Apr. 2018, and was soloist in the World Premiere of Jordan Nobles’ Piano Concerto with Bramwell Tovey and the VSO. He gave the World Premiere of Howard Bashaw's Concerto for Two Pianos and Percussion with conductor Grzegorz Nowak and the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, and  has recent and upcoming performances of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto 3, Prokofiev Piano Concerto 2, Bartok’s Piano Concerto 2, Lutoslawski’s Piano Concerto, Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, Faure’s Fantasie Op. 111, and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

Dr. Hamm is Professor of Piano at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where he was awarded the prestigious Killam Teaching Award. He is on the Piano Faculty of both the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (SICPP) at NEC in Boston, and MusicFest Perugia, in Italy. His beloved teachers include Lydia Artymiw, Marek Jablonski, Stéphane Lemelin, Ernesto Lejano, and Thelma Johannes O'Neill.

Guest Composer, Leslie Uyeda

As a long-time friend of Art Song Lab, we’re thrilled to have legendary composer and collaborative pianist, Leslie Uyeda as our guest composer for Art Song Lab 2020.

For your chance to work with Leslie, apply today.

Born in Montréal, Québec, Leslie Uyeda is a composer, pianist and conductor.

She studied piano with the late Dorothy Morton at McGill University and with William Aide at the University of Manitoba. She has played chamber music since her student days and continues to perform her own music with her colleagues.

During 20 years in opera, Leslie worked as a coach, pianist and conductor with the Canadian Opera Company, L’Opera de Montreal, Manitoba Opera, Opera Hamilton, the Banff Centre and the Chautauqua Institute of Music in New York. In concert she has collaborated with some of Canada’s best singers, performing recitals with Tracy Dahl, Richard Margison, Brett Polegato, Wendy Nielsen, Heather Pawsey, Liping Zhang, Jean Stilwell and Viviane Houle. After moving to Vancouver, B.C., Leslie became Chorus Music Director at Vancouver Opera, where she also conducted several mainstage productions.

Leslie started composing at a very young age. A few years ago she left her positions at Vancouver Opera and the University of British Columbia to compose full time. Leslie is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre, and is a member of SOCAN, the Canadian League of Composers (www.composition.org), and the Association of Canadian Women Composers (www.acwc.ca).

Leslie Uyeda's principal publisher is The Avondale Press (AvP) c/o The Canadian Music Centre.

Leslie lives very happily with her family in Vancouver. She loves reading, photography, walking her dog Puff, Iyengar yoga, watching great British TV, and cheering for Le Club de Hockey Canadien – the Montréal Canadiens!

(bio from www.leslieuyeda.com/)

Contralto, Lynne McMurtry

Described as “a force of nature” (Toronto Star) and “an actress of immense talent” (Opera Canada), contralto Lynne McMurtry is happiest when rehearsing powerful words set to evocative music, which is why she loves Art Song Lab.  Recent opera performances include Mistress Quickly in Verdi’s Falstaff with Calgary Opera and Marcellina in Le Nozze di Figaro with Opera Lyra.  In the concert realm she dreams of singing more of Das Lied von der Erde (Mahler) and the Alto Rhapsody by Brahms, both of which she performed with orchestra recently.  She teaches at the State University of New York College at Fredonia and is a Founding Faculty Artist of the Vancouver International Song Institute.

Pianist, Alison d'Amato

Pianist Dr. Alison d'Amato is a dynamic and versatile musician, committed to performing and teaching in the full spectrum of collaborative musical genres. A valued colleague and innovative mentor, she is Artistic Co-Director of Florestan Recital Project (www.florestanproject.org), Assistant Professor of Vocal Coaching at Eastman School of Music, and Clinical Assistant Professor at University at Buffalo. In all these activities, Alison is dedicated to energizing the relationships and communication inherent in music.

As both a pianist and teacher, Alison has developed several projects that explore interdisciplinary collaborations and new approaches to the performer-audience relationship. She is Program Director of Art Song Lab (www.artsonglab.com), an intensive workshop that presents new works in collaboration with composers, poets, and performers. Alison has been a guest artist at The AmBul Festival (Sofia, Bulgaria), SOURCE Song Festival, University of Toronto, Tufts University, Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, SUNY Fredonia, University of Minnesota, and Boston Conservatory. In addition to traditional masterclasses, Alison has shared classes with musicologists, English professors, singers, and instrumentalist partners. She has pursued that interdisciplinary approach in performance, notably with a Florestan/Maine State Ballet collaboration of “The Poet’s Love,” a highly-acclaimed original presentation of Schumann’s Dichterliebe with original choreography. 

Recent recording projects include The Complete Songs of Virgil Thomson (New World Records) and Music for Violin and Piano by Joseph Achron with violinist Michael Ludwig (Naxos). Recent concert activities include programs at the Schubert Club (St. Paul, MN), premieres with Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), Wordsong, and the Buffalo Chamber Players, and recitals with acclaimed soprano Tony Arnold.