Heidi Klassen
Artistic Director / Treasurer / International Soprano
Email: klassen.heidi@gmail.com

Soprano Heidi Klassen is firmly established as one of Canada's most versatile and exciting performers having sung with Canada's leading orchestras and opera companies in a career that spans over 20 years. Internationally Ms. Klassen has sung with the Dallas Symphony, the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra of Budapest, the BBC Scottish Orchestra and BBC Radio and toured extensively in Europe with live recordings at the Rudolfinum in Prague of Verdi's Requiem and Beethoven's Missa Solemnis...

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Natalie Burdeny
President / Web Designer / Mezzo Soprano

Praised for her "warm mezzo" (Opera Canada), Natalie Burdeny is becoming a sought-after performer in Western Canada. Having recently returned to Canada after a year living and working in Germany, she was welcomed home as the Mezzo Soloist in a performance of Verdi's Requiem with the Vancouver Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Neil Wiesensel.

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Dominique Brunchmann
Vice-President / Orchestral Advisor / Timpanist Extrordinaire

Dominique Brunchmann completed four years of a Bachelor of Music program at the University of British Columbia in 1997, majoring in Orchestral Percussion Performance. During this time, she became one of the youngest extra percussionists employed by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, and she has been performing with them since 1995...

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Frédérik Robert
Secretary / Performing Artist

At only 24 years old, Vancouver-based tenor Frédérik Robert has already sung over 20 roles and many concerts with professional companies and orchestras across Canada including: The Opera Project (Winnipeg / Edmonton / Vancouver), Edmonton Opera, Calgary Opera, Opera Nuova, Opera Saskatoon, Prince George Symphony, Dawson Creek Symphonette, Winnipeg Symphony, and National Arts Symphony Orchestra...

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Karen Shumka
Music Associate / Piano Collaborator

Karen Shumka is a much sought after vocal coach, répétiteur and accompanist. Karen has performed throughout North America in recitals, recordings and competitions and with opera companies from coast to coast in Canada, as well as in Austria. Karen is thoroughly enjoying her latest adventure with The Opera Project and firmly believes that this company is integral to the growth of opera in Canada...

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Kelly Crook
Member at Large / Voice Teacher / Soprano

Kelly completed her Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance at the University of British Columbia in 1989 and sang with the Vancouver Opera chorus from 1993 to 1997. She is active as a soloist in opera, oratorio and operetta in the Vancouver area, in Dawson Creek and in the Czech republic. She has recently premiered works by two local composers and is looking forward to performing another newly commissioned work for voice and piano in an upcoming solo recital for the Vocal Arts Society. Kelly is also a church musician, choir director, song writer and music instructor.

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Laszlo Gati
International Conductor / Violinist / Violist
www.laszlogati.com

Born in Timisoara, Rumania, 25 Sep 1925. He studied first in Rumania but moved in 1946 to Budapest, where he attended the Academy of Music and the National Cons and played in the Hungarian State Orchestra. His teachers were Dezsö Rados (violin), János Ferencsik (conducting), Sándor Veress and Pál Jardanyi (composition), and Zoltán Kodály (Hungarian folk music). He taught violin 1953-6 at the Budapest Cons and worked 1954-6 with the Hungarian Radio. He emigrated to Canada in 1957 and was a violist with the MSO under Igor Markevitch (with whom he studied) and Zubin Mehta. While in Montreal he conducted the Montreal Philharmonia in 1958 and founded the Montreal Chamber Orchestra in 1959. He studied with Hans Swarowsky in Nice in 1964 on a Canada Council grant. He was conductor of the Victoria Symphony Orchestra 1967-78. He conducted in Columbia and Venezuela in 1978, in Rumania in 1983, and was music director of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra 1979-85. He moved to Vancouver in 1989 and has continued to guest conduct, and to lecture on musical subjects for the Vancouver school board and for the Cunard line music tours. Gati is a gifted exponent of the romantic composers and of 20th-century Hungarian music, notably Bartók and Kodály, but he is at ease in most styles and includes Canadian works in his repertoire. - Excerpt taken from the The Canadian Encyclopdia of Music

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Howard Dyck
Artistic Director & Conductor - Kitchener Waterloo Philharmonic / Host - CBC's Saturday at the Opera and Sunday Morning Choral Concert

Howard Dyck is the Artistic Director and Conductor of the Kitchener Waterloo Philharmonic Choir. He is also the founding Artistic Director and Conductor of Consort Caritatis. Mr. Dyck is known across Canada as the programme host of Choral Concert and Saturday Afternoon at the Opera on CBC Radio.

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Kim Mattice Wanat
Artistic Director and Founder - NUOVA

Kim Mattice Wanat is a performer, teacher and director. Her performance experience includes roles in musical theater, oratorio and operatic productions. She is a freelance performer in touring productions, including ‘WIND, WOMEN & SONG’ a female quartet - 2 sopranos, piano and french horn, which performs classical music and will release their first CD in November of 2001. She is presently an instructor at the University of Alberta in the music and drama departments. She founded NUOVA in 1999 and is the Administrative Director/General Manager to the program. She is also the Founding Artistic Director of Discovery Playhouse, a youth music theater company in Edmonton, Ms Mattice Wanat frequently works as a musical director and director of opera and music theatre productions and frequently works as a clinician and adjudicator throughout Canada.

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Michael Harrison
BRAVO! Opera Interviewer/ Professor / Opera Critic

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Ruggero Barbieri
Conductor - Manila Orchestra, Philippines / Former Maestro - Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra

Maestro Barbieri currently resides in Italy.

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