2024 Clinicians
Beg/Jr Piano – Heather McGuire
Strings – Miriam Ferguson
Brass/Winds – Joel Gray
Voice – Miriam Khalil
Creative Music – Charles Stolte
Int/Sr Piano – Jane Hayes
Since her debut with the Toronto Symphony, Jane Hayes' concerts have taken her across Canada, the United States, Europe, Asia and Mexico. An active recording artist, she has over 30 CDs available on many prestigious labels. Two CDs – "Sassicaia" with clarinetist François Houle and “Four Jays” with Vetta Chamber Players – were recognized with nominations for the Western Canada Music Awards.
Jane moved to BC in 1993 to become a faculty member in the newly opened Music Department of Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Her passion for teaching was recognized when she received the 2015 Distinguished Teaching Award in the Faculty of Arts. Giving a series of recitals and master classes in 2017, she established a strong link with Chinese universities and private music schools. Past President of the Canadian Music Festival Adjudicators Association, she is in demand as adjudicator and clinician.
Jane has appeared on concert stages in every combination from duo through large ensemble, as soloist with orchestra to chamber collaborator. She has been a partner of such esteemed artists as cellist Harvey Shapiro, violinist Robert Davidovici, and flutists Julius Baker and Bonita Boyd. Jane has always had a strong affinity for contemporary music, being a founding member of Vancouver's internationally acclaimed Turning Point Ensemble and the Yarilo Ensemble . She has been featured in Canadian Music Centre concerts, performing the music of Alexina Louie, Barbara Pentland, Stephen Chatman and Ross Alden among others. Recent recording projects have included commemorative CDs for the late Canadian composers John Burke and Nikolai Korndorf, both released in 2022. The Korndorf recording made the CBC Top CD list of 2022. She has produced a volume of the early music of Barbara Pentland, recording and providing a teaching edition of works previously only available in manuscript.
Since leaving her position as music department head at Kwantlen in 2020, Jane has been able to focus on recording, performing, and inspiring young performers and audiences to understand the language of music.
Beg/Jr Piano – Heather McGuire
Heather McGuire runs a private music studio in Edmonton, Alberta where she teaches all levels of piano, theory, harmony, and music history. Heather also works as an examiner for Conservatory Canada and festival adjudicator. As a pianist, she continues to perform solo and collaborative repertoire with a special interest in 20th-century music.
Heather graduated from her Master of Music degree at the University of Alberta in May 2020 where she studied under Dr. Jacques Després. She focused her graduate studies on contemporary piano music, performing many 20th and 21st century works and completing the research portion of her degree on the benefits of teaching contemporary pieces at beginner and intermediate levels. Previously, Heather received her Artist Certificate and Bachelor of Music from Lakehead University where she studied with Dr. Evgeny Chugunov. Heather has also had the privilege of briefly studying with other prominent pianists including Jacques Rouvier, Gwendolyn Mok, Eve Egoyan, and Richard Raymond.
Heather has received many accolades for her academic and performative work, including the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship for her focus on contemporary Canadian works and the Johann Strauss Award which allowed her to study at the Mozarteum University in Austria. Heather also received the Steinway Top Teacher Award for 2022 and 2023.
In her spare time, Heather volunteers on the ARMTA Edmonton Branch Executive and with her local church. She also enjoys many hobbies including gardening, cooking, reading mystery novels, and hiking in the Canadian Rockies.
Strings – Miriam Ferguson
Miriam Ferguson began studying the viola at the age of eleven when she joined the Edmonton Public Schools Strings Program.
In 1997, she graduated from the University of Alberta with a Bachelor of Music Degree in performance on the viola. She decided four years later to return to the University of Alberta and graduated in 2003 with a Bachelor of Education Degree. Her viola teachers have included Miyo Inouye, Norman Nelson, Jonathan Craig, Tom Johnson, and Rivka Golani.
Miriam Ferguson has been the principal violist of the Edmonton Youth Orchestra, the University of Alberta’s Academy Strings and the University Symphony Orchestra. She occasionally plays in the viola section of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.
Miriam is currently busy as a private violin and viola instructor, freelance musician and, more recently, conductor. She conducts the Music Enrichment Program’s Beginner Student Orchestra and Beginner Adult Ensemble and often subs in to lead the Wye String Ensemble.
Miriam Ferguson also performs with the Strathcona String Quartet, the Ursus String Quartet, and with the Cifra Hungarian Folk Music Ensemble. The Cifra Ensemble has performed with the Edmonton Symphony and has been broadcast on CBC Radio One. Miriam has twice visited Hungary and Romania with the Cifra Ensemble to study and perform authentic village folk music.
Brass/Winds - Joel Gray
Joel Gray is an Edmonton-based freelance trumpeter and music educator with over three decades of experience. He has shared the stage with esteemed artists such as Tommy Banks, PJ Perry, Slide Hampton, Diana Krall, and the Temptations, showcasing his versatility in both jazz and classical genres.
Joel is a regular performer with various musical ensembles, including the Canadian All-Star JazzPops Orchestra, which gained recognition with a Juno award nomination for their album "Then Is Now 'Rhapsody in Blue'." Joel recently recorded with Maria Dunn on her Juno award winning album "A Joyful Banner Blazing". He is also a frequent collaborator with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, having played as assistant principal trumpet in Carnegie Hall and featured as a soloist in their "Tribute to Louis Armstrong."
In addition to his performance career, Joel has contributed his talents to professional musical theatre productions, including the National Broadway Tours of popular shows like "Book of Mormon," "Wicked," and "Beauty and the Beast." He is eagerly anticipating his involvement in the upcoming production of "Ain't To Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations" in Edmonton.
As a dedicated music educator since 1995, Joel has taught at respected institutions such as MacEwan University, Augustana University, and Keyano College. He currently serves as the Director at MusiCamp Alberta and has adjudicated at various music festivals, including the Cantando Music Festival and the Kiwanis Music Festival. Notably, he has been the director of the acclaimed “Littlebirds” jazz bands since 2004, fostering young talent in the realm of jazz education.
Voice – Miriam Khalil
A two-time Juno nominated artist, Miriam Khalil has established herself as one of Canada’s most versatile and expressive performers. Sought after for her interpretation of the works of Golijov, Puccini and Mozart. This past season, Miriam appeared with Beth Morrison Projects in New York for the world premiere of Mary Kouyoumdjian’s opera Adoration, Symphony Nova Scotia for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, returned to Pacific Opera Victoria to sing the role of Margarita Xirgu in Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar and to Edmonton Opera for her renowned interpretation of the composer’s song cycle Ayre.
Miriam also recently made her debuts with Vancouver Opera, Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra, Edmonton Symphony, Symphony of Northwest Arkansas, and Vancouver’s Music in the Morning, for repertoire including Leila in Bizet’s Pearl Fishers, Handel’s Messiah, Gorecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Ravel’s Shéhérazade and more. Miriam also appeared in her hometown of Ottawa, Ontario for Mozart’s Don Giovanni, singing Donna Elvira with the National Arts Centre Orchestra under the baton of Alexander Shelley.
In 2019, Miriam produced and was nominated for a Juno Award for Classical Album of the Year: Vocal or Choral, for her debut album Ayre: Live, a song cycle by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov. With this song cycle, she made her South American Debut, and premiered Ayre in Buenos Aires at the Kirchner Cultural Centre. She has sung Ayre to critical acclaim in Banff and Edmonton Alberta, Ottawa and Toronto, Ontario, Victoria British Columbia, and opened the prestigious Rockport Music Festival in the USA, making this Song Cycle her signature piece. She also opened the 21c Music Festival at Koerner Hall with this very piece in 2020.
She has sung on numerous opera stages across North America and the U.K., including a stint at the renowned Glyndebourne Festival Opera (GFO) in the United Kingdom. Notable roles include Mimì in La Bohème (Canadian Opera Company, Minnesota Opera, Opera Hamilton, Calgary Opera, Edmonton Opera, and Against the Grain Theatre (AtG)); Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni (Opera Tampa and AtG/The Banff Centre/Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival, National Arts Center Orchestra); Mélisande in Pelléas et Mélisande (AtG); the Governess in The Turn of the Screw (AtG); Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare (GFO); Almirena in Rinaldo (GFO); Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro (Pacific Opera Victoria, Opera Lyra Ottawa, and AtG), Alcina (Fargo Moorhead Opera), Marzelline in Fidelio (Pacific Opera Victoria) and Mamah Cheney in Hagen’s Shining Brow (Urban Arias) among others.
Miriam made her much-anticipated major role debut with the Canadian Opera Company as Mimì in La Bohème in 2019, a role she revisited with Edmonton Opera in 2022. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Miriam pivoted masterfully to the digital stage and was involved in numerous innovative virtual projects.
With Pacific Opera Victoria, she participated in their ‘For All to Hear’ series, where she created, directed, produced and sang an online Arabic video recital, Songs My Parents Taught Me. She mentored their Apprentice Civic Engagement quartet (four young artists per year) to create, produce and direct their own virtual projects. She sang Elle in Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine in a unique Poulenc/Cocteau digital project with VOICEBOX: Opera in Concert to critical acclaim and sang in recital with Baritone Russel Braun and pianist Carolyn Maule, premiering a song cycle by Afarin Mansouri in the Mazzoleni Masters series at the Royal Conservatory, commissioned by Canadian Art Song Project. Miriam was also featured in Against the Grain Theatre’s digital production of Bound and picked up a directing credit on their film of Holst’s opera Sāvitri. Her recent seasons were also highlighted by Messiah/Complex, an internationally acclaimed, ATG/Toronto Symphony realization of Handel’s Messiah filmed against iconic Canadian landscapes sung in six languages by twelve soloists and 4 choirs. She was nominated for her second Juno with the recent release of the Messiah/Complex Album and won a Digital Excellence in Opera award with Opera America for ‘Best Noteworthy Project’. Miriam is a graduate of the prestigious Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio, the Steans Institute for Young Artists (Ravinia) and the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme in England.
While in her last year of the COC Ensemble Studio, she advanced to the semi-finals of the Metropolitan Opera Council auditions and represented the Great Lakes Region on the Met stage, during which she was featured in the documentary film The Audition. She is a recipient of multiple awards and grants from the George London Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and the Metropolitan Opera National Council Audition Scholarships.
She is a proud founding member of the Dora Mavor Moore Award-winning opera company Against the Grain Theatre (AtG). She also recently joined the Voice Faculty at the University of Alberta and is very excited to be working with the next generation of singing artists and creators.
Creative Music – Charles Stolte
Once described by Classical Music magazine as a musician of “dazzling commitment and versatility,” Charles Stolte, enjoys a richly varied career as a saxophonist, composer and teacher. Canada Council for the Arts, The Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Royal College of Canadian Organists have all funded multiple commissions of his more than thirty works for organ, guitar, saxophone, horn, recorder, voice, choir, a variety of wind chamber ensembles including Edmonton’s Wind Rose Trio, and two concerti: one for organ and orchestra and another for saxophone and orchestra.
CBC radio has broadcast his performances and compositions nationally and his music enjoys performances across North America, in Europe and in Asia. Stolte has presented his own music, and music written for him, at conferences throughout North America and he was a featured composer and performer at World Saxophone Congresses XII and XIII in Montréal and Minneapolis, respectively. He is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre and a former Chair of its Prairie Region. He has also served as President of New Music Edmonton.
Dr. Stolte is Professor of Music History, Saxophone, and Composition at The King's University and Instructor of Saxophone at MacEwan University Conservatory of Music and Concordia University of Edmonton. He has served on the faculties of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Roosevelt University, and the University of Alberta (Edmonton and Augustana campuses). He holds a Doctor of Music degree in Saxophone Performance from Northwestern University, where he was the first Canadian accepted to the doctoral program for study with renowned saxophonist Frederick L. Hemke. Dr. Stolte also holds degrees from the University of Alberta and The King’s University. His teachers include Frederick L. Hemke, William H. Street, Howard Bashaw, Malcolm Forsyth, M. William Karlins and Jay Alan Yim.
Guitar - Valentina Benvenuti
Valentina Benvenuti began her musical journey in Pesaro, Italy, under the guidance of Maestros Ferrante Faedi and Pietro Antinori at the prestigious Rossini Conservatory. In 2016, she graduated with a Master’s Degree in Classical Guitar Performance. Now based in Edmonton, Canada, Valentina is deeply involved in the local music community as the vice president of the Edmonton Classical Guitar Society. Her performances span solo engagements, chamber music, and collaborations with the cellist Kasia Saturna in duo Bellanota. Valentina’s versatility as a musician is evident in her ability to play the Baroque guitar with the ensemble Nueva Convivencia. She also conducts the ECGS Adult Guitar Orchestra and the WMA Pedagogical Guitar Orchestra with Renee Perez, and she is a passionate music instructor.