Faculty and Staff

Torin Chiles (tenor) wears many hats.  As a performer Mr. Chiles’ active performing career has spanned 20 years and his resume is replete with engagements from North American Symphonies and Opera Companies.  He has recently been featured on CBCTelevision’s Opening Night as McAlpine in the critically acclaimed new Canadian opera, Filumena.  His operatic credits include:  Count Almaviva  and Pinkerton for the Opera Lyra at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa and for the Manitoba Opera Association, Pang for L’Opera de Montreal, Arizona Opera, Vancouver Opera Association, Calgary, Edmonton and the Manitoba Opera Association.  He has played the Magician in the Consul for the Florentine Opera company in Milwaukee, the Manitoba Opera Association and twice for L’Opera de Montreal where he has also been featured as Bob Boles in their highly successful Peter Grimes.  Other performances have included MacDuff in Winnipeg, Tom Rakewell and Rodolfo in Toronto.  Mr. Chiles has often been featured on the CBC Saturday Afternoon at the Opera broadcasts as both artists and panelist.  Over the past twenty years Mr. Chiles has performed for every major opera company in Canada and most Canadian orchestras.

Torin Chiles is also a seasoned performer of Operetta and Music Theatre repertoire.  He has performed Gilbert and Sullivan roles for The Winnipeg Symphony, the Manitoba Opera Association, and the Festival of the Sound. He is also featured on a CBC SM5000 recording entitled A Gilbert and Sullivan Gala with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra under Bramwell Tovey.  Mr. Chiles has performed Music Theatre “Pops” concerts with several Canadian orchestras including the Winnipeg Symphony, the Hamilton Philharmonic and the National Arts Centre Orchestra and he has portrayed Operetta roles such as: Orpheus in Orpheus in the Underworld for the Toronto Operetta Theatre (TOT), Camille in the Merry Widow for the Regina Symphony, the Windsor Symphony and TOT.  Mr. Chiles has been involved with the development and premiers of new music, opera projects such as Luis Applebaum’sErewhon, John Beckwith’s Taptoo, Timothy Sullivan’s The Lady of the Lamp and recently John Estacio’s Filumena.

As a pedagogue, adjudicator, examiner and clinician Mr. Chiles is in ever increasing demand.  He has been a full-time voice faculty member at the Don Wright Faculty of Music at the University of Western Ontario since 2004, serving as the Voice Division Coordinator from 2006-2011, and he began his teaching career at UWO in 1999.  Examining and Adjudicating have taken him across the continent since 1999.  Mr. Chiles teaches the Vocal Pedagogy course at UWO and frequently presents public lectures and Voice Technique Workshops to groups as diverse as:  the Alberta Music Teachers Association, NATS Ontario, Conservatory Canada, the interdisciplinary Music and Medicine series and the Schulich Faculty of Medicine at UWO. A NATS member since 1999, Mr. Chiles is the Past President of the Ontario Chapter of NATS (National Association of Teachers of Singing) and currently serves as District Governor.

Now residing in London, Ontario with his wife, Lesley and their two young sons (Nawton and Tennyson), Torin Chiles is the Director of Music for a thriving and exciting music ministry at New St. James Presbyterian Church in downtown London.

Marja Ernst is a freelance arts administrator who provides various arts administration, booking services, and consultation to artists and arts groups.

She is currently working with the Halifax Summer Opera Workshop, the Yorkshire Opera Workshop, and Opera Atlantic as administrator and producer.

Soprano Lorna MacDonald enjoys a career of distinction as an acclaimed lyric-coloratura and teacher, and is Full Professor of Voice and Voice Pedagogy at the University of Toronto. In 2001 she received a career honor of being named to the Lois Marshall Chair in Voice Studies. From 1994-2007 she served as Head of Voice Studies, a position from which she initiated many successful and innovative additions to the voice studies curriculum at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Her record was recognized with Ontario’s prestigious OCUFA Award for “teaching excellence and outstanding contributions to university teaching”. A native of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Prof. MacDonald is a graduate of Dalhousie University and the New England Conservatory of Music, with additional studies in the US and Europe.

Opera, art song, and voice science are among her passions, fulfilled through her teaching of graduate and undergraduate voice and vocal pedagogy. “I am ever mindful that I teach singers – not only singing – and this has allowed me to develop a pedagogy and philosophy which has the highest respect for my students as individuals, for their special talent, and for the art of music. I have achieved a professional balance between education and performance that makes them almost indistinguishable to me.” Her students are found on opera and concert stages from Victoria to St. John’s, and from Santa Fe to Venice.

Having taught and sung across Canada and US, in Wales, Taiwan, France, Ireland, the UK, Germany, Bermuda, she has judged and given classes for the Metropolitan Opera National Council, Canadian Opera Company, the Banff Festival and as judge for the Canadian JUNO awards. A recent master class for the COC was described, “Music lessons from a master…soprano became a master of transformation… in one of the opera company’s rehearsal halls. (Toronto Star 2006) Prof. MacDonald is on the faculty of the Toronto International Summer Academy, and Choral Music Education summer festivals.

An active performer, reviewers of Canadian performances have written,

“fiery soprano MacDonald dazzles” (Halifax Herald, 2000)

“showcasing the expressive voice of soprano Lorna MacDonald” (Toronto Star 2004)

“an absolute jewel” (Edmonton Journal 1994)

“MacDonald’s freshness of tone, her clarity of style and diction, and her beautifully expressive musicianship are served by a perfection of technical mastery which allows her to sing both softly and full on any note in her entire range, as meaning and emotional imagery require.” (Halifax Herald 2006)

In the United States (1978-1994), she received awards from the Metropolitan Opera, Chicago Lyric, Dallas, Fort Worth Opera guilds and the National Opera Association. The CBC, PBS and NPR have broadcast her performances in opera and oratorio with regional orchestras and international festivals. MacDonald has given the premières of many works written for her by Canadian and American composers, and she thrives in the recital format where she can be found performing with our finest musicians, among them conductor Daniel Beckwith, trumpeter Guy Few, clarinetist Peter Stoll, and pianists Cameron Stowe, William Aide and Che Anne Loewen.

In 2006 she recorded Mozart’s Exsultate Jubilate and Buxtehude’s Singet dem Herrn for CBC, she was soloist with conductor Helmuth Rilling in the International Bach Festival in 2004 and 2005, soloist for Brahms’ Requiem in Chicago and Mozart’s Mass in C minor in Oakville, Ontario. A creative programmer, and in recognition of the Mozart 250th anniversary year, she adapted and designed the concert “Marrying Mozart” based on the book by Stephanie Cowell. In it she portrays Josefina, Aloysia and Constanze Weber, the sisters for whom Mozart wrote some of his most beautiful and challenging arias. The 2007 season includes To be sung upon the Water featuring water texts for soprano, clarinet and piano, a Recital for Organ and Soprano in Kingston, Ontario with John Tuttle, and a recital In their words, based on the lives and loves of Lieder composers with pianist Cameron Stowe for the Toronto International Summer Festival. June and July of 2007 find her in the US where she is a Master Teacher for the Master Teachers of Singing week at the Summer Session of Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ, and a voice workshop presenter for the Voice Foundation Symposium in Philadelphia. Future performances take her to San Antonio and Portland.

Soprano Jessica McCormack is an Assistant Professor of Music at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. She holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of North Texas, a Master of Music in vocal performance with honors in opera from Southern Methodist University, and a Bachelor of Music in vocal performance from the University of Toronto. Dr. McCormack has sung at Carnegie Hall, under the direction of Ton Koopman and Helmuth Rilling, and at the Boston Early Music Festival. Her operatic roles include Nannetta in Verdi’s Falstaff, Barbarina in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, Aurora in Cavalli’s L’Egisto and Tirsi in Handel’s Clori, Tirsi e Fileno. Her oratorio work includes Carissimi’s Jepthe, Vivaldi’s Gloria, Schütz’s Die sieben Worte, Bach’s Weihnachtsoratorium, Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s Requiem, Schubert’s Mass in G, and Fauré’s Requiem. A featured soloist with the Fort Worth Symphony, Symphony New Brunswick and the Bach Society of Dayton, Dr. McCormack was a national winner of the Canadian Music Competition (vocal division), a finalist at the NATS (Texoma Region) “Singer of the Year” competition and has received awards from the Mendelssohn Foundation of Toronto and the Women’s Chorus of Dallas.

Dr. McCormack also enjoys performing contemporary music and collaborating in a variety of chamber ensembles. She is the featured soprano soloist on the CD Works of Minoru Miki, released by Texas A&M University. She has been a guest lecturer at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, at the Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities and for NATS (Ohio Chapter). Her studies and performances have taken her to Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and the Czech Republic, where she was a guest master class clinician at the Janáček Conservatory in Brno. Last May, she gave a recital on the works of Pauline Viardot in France for the Saison Viardot. Dr. McCormack was invited to return to Carnegie Hall in February 2011 to perform Berlioz’s Requiem as a member of the Carnegie Hall Festival Chorus under the direction of Robert Spano. She frequently performs with her trumpeter husband, Dr. Edward Phillips and the duo will be touring a sacred music recital in Canada and the United States during the spring and summer months.

David Mosey has many years’ experience as both an actor and director in the UK and North America. He was at the Bristol Old Vic for a season where he played Prince Hal in Henry IV pt 1 and Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet. His directing credits include modern dress productions of Macbeth and King Lear at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, One Way Pendulum at the Alnwick Theatre Festival, The Duchess of Malfi (Atkinson College) and Rosencranz and Guildernstern are Dead (Newcastle University). His opera directing credits include Riders to the Sea with Opera Anonymous in Toronto, as well as co-directing Magic Flute and Midsummer Night’s Dream with HSOW.

Dr. Anthony P. Radford is a talented singer, director, designer, researcher and writer. He holds an international reputation in the areas of teaching, scholarship, singing and opera performance.  He currently is Assistant Professor of Voice and Opera at California State University, Fresno where he serves as the Coordinator for the Voice Performance degree and is the director of the Fresno State Opera Theatre.  He was also Assistant Professor of Voice at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada.

Originally from Toronto, Canada, he holds a B.A. in Political Science from York University and a Master of Music degree from the New England Conservatory of Music.  He was an Othmer Fellow at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln where he earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree.  Dr. Radford studies also took him to the Britten-Pears School in Aldeburgh, England where he appeared in opera roles at the Aldeburgh Festival and the Snape Maltings.

Dr. Radford has performed 21 opera roles and 15 solo recitals in his 20 years of professional singing. He has been heard on CBC, KIOS Omaha, and KVPR Fresno.  Recent performances include appearances with the Fresno Philharmonic, Tulare County Symphony, Fresno Choral Artists, Fresno Community Chorus, California Opera and performances in Italy and Canada with Fresno State and Halifax Summer Opera Workshop.  This spring he directed a sold out run of Puccini’s La Bohème in Fresno and this summer he directed Carmen in Halifax, Nova Scotia.   Upcoming performances include a recital of English Song in Fresno, a concert appearance with the Santa Maria Philharmonic and a return to Halifax, Canada to direct Le nozze di Figaro in 2013.

He is a published author, a presenter at many international and national conferences and sits the Board of Directors of the National Opera Association. He is a regular adjudicator with the National Association of Teachers of Singing, the founder of the Lethbridge/Medicine Hat NATS Chapter, and was a 2006 of the NATS intern program in Kansas City.  His article on Mozart’s first Figaro appears in the Jan/Feb 2010 edition of the Journal of Singing and he had the privilege of reviewing vocal pedagogue Richard Miller’s last book Securing Baritone, Bass-Baritone and Bass Voices for Voiceprints in 2009.

As a popular Master Class clinician he has given over 50 master classes across North America most recently giving a Master Classes at San José State University and in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He has adjudicated for the National Association of Teacher of Singing, National Opera Association and for Miss California, part of the Miss America organization, a scholarship organization for young women.

Dr. Radford is committed to serving his local musical community through regular pre-performance lecturers for the Fresno Grand Opera and hosting a table at the Fresno County Library Annual Fundraising dinner. He will also give presentations this year to Alliance Français, Fresno and the Osher Lifelong Learning Centre.

Dr. Radford is interested in how his discipline of singing and opera can help the wider community and in areas of collaboration with colleagues in other academic areas. Most recent research interests are in vocal health and education in collaboration with colleagues in Speech and Hearing at Fresno State.  Further, Dr. Radford is pursuing interests in Sustainability Environmental education through musical and vocal performance with colleagues at Dalhousie University, Halifax.

He lives in Fresno’s historical Fig Garden/Fresno High district with his wife Sarah and son Jonathan.

Originally from St. Catharines, Blair Salter is a freelance collaborative pianist. Blair began piano and completed her ARCT from the Royal Conservatory of Music as a student of John Butler. She completed her Bachelor of Music degree in Piano Performance at the University of Western Ontario, where she studied with Stephan Sylvestre. Blair recently obtained her Master of Music degree in Collaborative Piano at the University of Western Ontario, where she had the privilege of working with John Hess and Mark Payne.

In 2009, she was honoured to perform as a soloist with the Niagara Symphony Orchestra and appeared again with the NSO in April 2011, performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 under the baton of Maestro Uri Mayer. Blair was a pianist at the Canadian Operatic Arts Academy in 2009 and 2010, where she worked with Martin Katz, Eric Melear and Gary Wedow. Blair has had the opportunity to study Dvořák’s Rusalka with Rosemary Thompson and Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos with Timothy Vernon at Opera NUOVA in Edmonton, Alberta. In 2011, Blair was a pianist for La Musica Lirica in Novafeltria, Italy. While studying at UWO, she has been a vocal coach for UWOpera’s productions of La Griselda in 2011 and Die Fledermaus in 2012.

Blair currently resides in Toronto, and she works with Toronto Opera Repertoire as the pianist for their 2012/2013 season. She is also excited to be the music director for Metro Youth Opera for their upcoming season. She is the Assistant Music Director at Grace Anglican Church and is a freelance vocal coach, instrumental accompanist and private teacher.

Nina moved to Lunenburg, NS from Toronto in 2002. Nina is the co-founder of Toronto’s Opera Anonymous, which produced over 20 well-reviewed works in its eight year history. Since relocating to Nova Scotia, Nina has founded Maritime Concert Opera, which has just completed a very successful ninth season.

As a professional mezzo soprano, Nina has sung with many orchestras and opera companies, including Tafelmusik, Opera Atelier, Opera Maine, Toronto Operetta Theatre, Opera in Concert, the Kingston Symphony, the International Chamber Music Festival in New Zealand, Opera Nova Scotia, and the NS Gilbert and Sullivan Society.

Nina directed opera for a number of groups in Toronto, and since moving to NS has worked as Artistic Producer for ONS’s Opera Valentine for the past five years and as stage director and General Manager for HSOW’s productions of Cosi fan Tutte, Don Giovanni, Handel’s Giulio Cesare and Menotti’s The Consul, Floyd’s Susannah and Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann. Nina was the guest stage director for the Dalhousie University Opera Workshop for four years: for Dal she directed Menotti’s The Old Maid and the Thief, The Telephone and Barber’s A Hand of Bridge and Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, and Gianni Schicchi and Mollicone’s Face on the Barroom Floor.  This year she directed  RENT for DGM Music Inc. in Halifax, Amahl and the Night Visitors for Maritime Concert Opera and  You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown for Acadia University’s Singing Theatre program.

You can find her production company website at dangerousmezzo.com

Lyric Tenor Lenard Whiting has sung professionally for the past two and a half decades. Over the course of his distinguished career he has worked with the Canadian Opera Company, Opera in Concert, Vancouver Opera Company, Toronto Operetta Theatre, Summer Opera Lyric Theatre, Opera Anonymous, Opera York, Maritime Concert Opera in Nova Scotia and Opera Mississauga.
His many oratorio performances included Bach’s St. Matthew (English) and St. John Passion (German/English), Weihnachts Oratorium and Magnificat, Britten’s St. Nicholas, Dvorak’s Stabat Mater, Handel’s Messiah and Ode on the Death of Queen Elizabeth, Haydn’s Creation and various Masses, Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang and Elijah, Mozart’s Requiem, Masses and Vespers, Puccini’s Messa di Gloria and Vaughan William’s Hodie and Serenade to Music.

Among his memorable appearances were at an evening celebrating English composers, most notably Benjamin Britten, at an Opera Anonymous/TrypTych Productions performance in Toronto, and at a highly successful presentation of Sir Edward Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, one of the greatest choral works to come from a British composer since Purcell, brought to Toronto audiences by the Pax Christi Chorale with Lenard singing the part of Gerontius.

Equally at ease with lieder recitals, particularly with his interpretation of Franz Schubert’s Die Winterreise and Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Liederkreis, Lenard represented Canada at a four-continent-wide Chamber Music Festival, Lebensstürme, which had a most successful inauguration in May 2001 in Austria and which immediately resulted in an invitation for Lenard to participate again in 2002 in Austria, Australia, Canada, and Japan. Most recently Lenard was featured as guest artist with the Summer Institute of Church (SICM) 2007 where he performed Vaughan Williams’ “Songs of Travel” and Finzi’s “Dies Natalis”.
Lenard’s repertoire includes Bruckner’s Mass in F minor, recitals in Eastbourne, Chichester and Portsmouth, England, the Festival in Austria, and a concert series with Princess Caroline Murat of Monaco, performances at Place des Artes, Montreal. In July 2002 Lenard was a featured soloist in a gala concert presented to Pope John Paul II during his visit to Toronto. Most recently he performed in the Toronto International Chamber Music Festival, where, among other things, he sang the Canadian premiere of Andrew Ager’s Campfire in the Sun song cycle. Lenard recently made his Nova Scotia debut at the inaugural concert and consequent concerts with the newly-formed Maritime Concert Opera, in a programme of opera arias and duets performed in Liverpool, Lunenburg and Halifax to very enthusiastic audiences! Consequent performances have included Cavellaria Rusticana, and working with Opera Nova Scotia. Recent performances have included performing the role of Evangelist in both Bach’s St. Matthew and St. John Passions including performances in March 2006 at St. James’ Cathedral Toronto with members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Choirs of St. James’ Cathedral, University of Toronto at Scarborough Concert Choir and Ensemble TrypTych Chamber Choir in the dual roles as Evangelist and Conductor. This past October Lenard participated in the International Bach Symposium in the Conducting Masterclasses under the esteemed direction of Maestro Helmuth Rilling.

Lenard was born in Kenora, Ontario, and educated at the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto. He lives in Toronto where he is also active as a conductor, music educator (both privately and with the University of Toronto), Co-founder/producer of TrypTych Productions, “Canada’s Advocates of the Vocal Arts”, and church organist and choir director at Trinity Presbyterian Church, Toronto. Lenard enthusiastically shares his passion of music with all with whom he comes in contact.