Faculty
Nina Scott-Stoddart
General Manager of HSOW and Co-Director
Stage Director for Susannah, 2010
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 seventh 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. Nina has directed the Dalhousie University Opera Workshop for four years: for Dal she’s 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 this year has directed Gianni Schicchi and Mollicone’s Face on the Barroom Floor.
You can find her production company website at dangerousmezzo.com
Tara Scott
HSOW Co-Director, Music Director Susannah, 2010
Tara Scott, originally from Grand-Bay Westfield, NB, holds a Bachelor of Music degree in piano performance from Mount Allison University and a Master’s Degree in collaborative piano from the University of Western Ontario. Tara has performed extensively with singers and instrumentalists in Europe and across Canada, and has appeared on national television and radio.
Tara has worked as accompanist and vocal coach at the University of Western Ontario, Dalhousie University, Mount Allison University and, presently, Acadia University. Tara sits on the piano faculty of the Maritime Conservatory of Performing Arts and is sought after as a piano adjudicator and examiner. She is the accompanist for the Dalhousie Coro Collegium (formerly the Dalhousie Chorale) and is the pianist and music director for Maritime Concert Opera, Halifax Summer Opera Workshop and Acadia’s Singing Theatre Ensemble. Among the operas Tara has acccompanied and music directed are Cosi fan tutte, Don Giovanni, Die Zauberflöte, The Consul, Barber of Seville, Hansel and Gretel, La traviata, La bohème, Carmen, Suor Angelica and Tosca.
Nicole Bellamy
Music Director, Alcina, 2010
Originally from Charlottetown, P.E.I., Nicole Bellamy now lives and works in Toronto as a collaborative pianist. Nicole holds a M.Mus. degree in Piano Performance (Collaborative Piano) from the University of Western Ontario, and a B.Mus. degree from the University of Prince Edward Island.
Her special interest in vocal accompaniment, both in art song and opera has also led to additional studies at Opera Nuova in Edmonton, the Banff Centre of the Arts, the Brevard Music Centre in North Carolina and Songfest in Malibu, California where she studied with renowned collaborative pianists Martin Katz and Graham Johnson. She has also been awarded grants from both the PEI Council of the Arts and the Canada Council of the Arts to pursue her studies in vocal accompaniment.
As a pianist she freelances in Toronto, works in the vocal studios at the University of Toronto and the Royal Conservatory, and has also worked with the Toronto Mendelssohn Youth Choir, the Upper Canada Choristers, Bravo’s Bathroom Divas (season 2), The Charlottetown Festival, Opera New Brunswick, Tryptych Opera, Opera York, Brampton Lyric Opera as well as York University’s and the Royal Conservatory’s Summer Opera Programs.
Garry Williams
Stage Director for Alcina, 2010
Garry is a director, performer, writer and teacher. Raised in Berlin, he studied Music and Theatre at the Free University Berlin, Manhattanville College and graduated with a B. Mus. from Mount Allison University.
In Canada, he has directed Hansel and Gretel (Acadia’s Singing Theatre), Le nozze di Figaro (HSOW), The Mikado and Patience (GSNS), as well as Fiddler on the Roof and Annie Get Your Gun (Garnet & Gold).
His stage appearances include the workshop production for So… What About Love? (DaPoPo), Come to the Cabaret! and La bohème (Maritime Concert Opera), the workshop for Rockbound (Two Planks and a Passion), Fewer Emergencies (Angels and Heroes), Sunday in the Park With George (DaPoPo) and Creatures of the Moment (Metamorphic Theatre).
Having written alone and collaboratively, (most recently the musical revue So… What About Love?), he sits on the board for the Playwright’s Atlantic Resource Centre (PARC).
He has taught at Neptune Theatre School’s Pre-Professional Training Program and Youth Performance Company, Acadia University, Mount Allison University, Dalhousie University, The Canadian Conservatory of Music, Drama Fest, Alderney Landing and Halifax West.
He is the Artistic Director and founding member of DaPoPo Theatre and performs regularly in their productions, locally and internationally.
Marcia Swanston
Vocal Masterclasses
Marcia Swanston returns to HSOW for her sixth year in 2010. Ms Swanston continues to be one of Canada’s most respected mezzo sopranos over a varied career commanding an impressive array of vivid operatic roles as well as a wide variety of oratorio and concert repertoire. She has received critical acclaim for her wide-ranging acting ability as well as for her dramatic musical interpretation and technical ease. She has appeared with major opera companies and symphony orchestras across Canada and the United States in numerous roles. Recent broadcasts include Noye’s Fludde for CBC television’s “Opening Night” series and for Radio Canada the Verdi Requiem as part of the McGill Music Faculty’s 100th Anniversary celebrations.
Ms. Swanston was a member of the faculty of music at UWO prior to accepting her current position of associate professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She has just completed a sabbatical year which saw performances with the Canadian Opera Company, Calgary Opera, and Opera New Brunswick, among many others.
Andrew Pickett
Baroque Style Masterclass
Andrew received his Master of Music in Vocal Literature and Performance from the University of Western Ontario, and then proceeded to the Royal College of Music, London, England where he obtained his graduate diploma, studying with Ashley Stafford. He has coached with such notable experts in the vocal Baroque as Dame Emma Kirkby, James Bowman, Michael Chance and Daniel Taylor.
His repertoire includes performance roles in operas by Monteverdi, Alessandro Scarlatti, Hasse, Handel, Purcell and the contemporary composer Jonathan Dove. He is a founding member of The 1607 Ensemble vocal consort and My Lady’s Chamber period ensemble, was Lay Clerk in the Manchester Cathedral Choir and, from 2000–2004, a member of the Tafelmusik Chamber Choir. He has been a soloist in concert choral works by Purcell, Charpentier, Handel, Orff, and Bach (Mass in B Minor and St. John Passion) in the UK, France, and Canada. He was a Britten-Pears Young Artist and Brighton Early Music Festival Young Artist.
Work in 2009 includes Sorceress/Mercury in Dido and Aeneas for Opera Erratica, Toronto, and Nerone in Handel Agrippina for the Barber Opera, Birmingham.
Lorna MacDonald
Vocal Masterclass
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
2010 Masterclasses
Vocal Masterclasses: Marcia Swanston and Lorna MacDonald
Baroque Style: Andrew Pickett
Acting Masterclass: Garry Williams
Auditioning: Panel discussion
