Juliet Palmer is a composer, sound artist and performer from New Zealand. She moved to New York in 1990 to work with Meredith Monk on her opera Atlas. She holds a doctorate in composition from Princeton University. Working in diverse media, her output ranges from chamber music to multimedia installations, dance, music theatre, opera and symphonic works. Her music has been featured at festivals and concerts in Europe, North America and Asia-Pacifi c. With urbanvessel collective she created Slip at Toronto’s Harrison Baths under auspices of X Avant Festival, and Stitch at The Theatre Centre’s 2008 FreeFall Festival in partnership with Harbourfront’s World Stage. She was nominated for the 2005 KM Hunter Award for Music, was guest curator for Continuum Contemporary Music 2006-7, and serves on the board of Musicworks Magazine. Projects underway include Shelter with writer Julie Salverson for Tapestry New Opera Works, American Woman for Motion Ensemble, and Mutt for percussionist Morris Palter.

After hearing ten-year old Anita Pari play piano at this year’s Kiwanis Music Festival, adjudicator Dr. Adrienne Shannon commented: “Anita, your little hands were recreating art. There is a special seed inside you that contains the blossom of creativity and artistry.” Anita received the Musical Arts Club trophy for her performance of a Mozart concerto. Last year she received the junior piano trophy for her concert group performance. Anita began learning piano when she was three years old at Music for Young Children, and then continued with Heather Norian. She now studies with Professor Andrew Tunis of the University of Ottawa. She received the Silver Medal of the Royal Conservatory of Music twice, for completing the requirements of the grades 5 and 7 piano examinations with the highest mark in the province. Anita has been a regular participant in local, provincial and national music festivals, receiving scholarships and honours in piano, cello and composition.

Vincent Parizeau began his studies at Montreal’s St. Joseph’s Oratory with the celebrated Petits Chanteurs du Mont-Royal. He studied at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal with Rodolpho Masella and Gerald Corey, graduating with First Place Honours at age 21. He pursued further studies with Franck Morelli and obtained his Master’s at Yale University. On his return from the United States, he founded the Ensemble Synapse, a group of 14 musicians that perform without conductor a repertoire of original works. An ardent advocate of contemporary music, he has performed regularly with contemporary music ensembles, including the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec and l’Ensemble contemporain de Montréal with whom he recorded two albums. He has played in a number of orchestras including the Orchestre symphonique de Laval and Orchestre des Grands Ballets Canadiens, He played for a season in the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal before joining the National Arts Centre Orchestra at the beginning of the 2004-05 season.

Angela Park’s many awards and competition prizes include the International Grace Welsh Prize for Piano (Chicago), World Piano Competition (Cincinnati), Canadian National Music Festival, and Ontario Arts Council’s Chalmers Professional Development Grant. She was a semifi nalist and the only Canadian participant in the 2006 Honens International Piano Competition (Calgary), and a medal recipient at the 2007 Maria Canals International Piano Competition in Barcelona. Recent performances include solo appearances with Sinfonia Toronto, Orchestra London Canada, and Canadian Sinfonietta. She has worked with conductors Raffi Armenian, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Mark Skazinetsky, among others. She has performed in CBC Radio OnStage, in concert series at the University of Illinois and Steinway Society of Chicago, and at the Mostly Mozart Festival in Maine and Northern Lights Music Festival in Mexico. She holds a master’s degree from the University of Toronto where she studied with William Aide and is completing a doctorate at the Université de Montréal under the guidance of Paul Stewart.

One of Canada’s most versatile musicians, pianist James Parker enjoys performing solo, concerto, vocal, and chamber music concerts in addition to teaching as the Rupert E. Edwards Chair in Piano Performance at the University of Toronto. He has performed with every major Canadian orchestra, given command performances at embassies on three continents, and has performed for two Governors-General of Canada. His major teachers included Kum-Sing Lee at University of British Columbia, Marek Jablonski and Lorand Fenyves at the Banff Centre, and Adele Marcus at the Juilliard School. Winning prizes at the Eckhardt-Gramatté, Montreal International, and Gina Bachauer International competitions launched his performing career. In 1993, he formed the Gryphon Trio with Annalee Patipatanakoon and Roman Borys, and they are celebrating their 15th season of international touring. The Trio has just recorded their 10th CD for the Analekta label. James Parker won two 2004 Juno awards, one for the Gryphon Trio recording of Canadian Premieres, and the other for Azulao with soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian.

The Penderecki String Quartet was formed in Poland in 1986 and named for Polish composer Krysztof Penderecki. Performing year-round on the great concert stages of North and South America, Europe and the Far East, the celebrated Quartet’s recent engagements have included concerts in New York, Amsterdam, St. Petersburg, Paris and Los Angeles, and international festivals in Poland, Lithuania, Italy, Venezuela, Hong Kong and Shanghai. The Quartet has collaborated with many eminent ensembles and artists such as Martin Beaver, James Campbell and choreographer David Earle. Championing music of our time, the Quartet commands a repertoire ranging from Bach to Zappa, and to date has premiered over 100 new works. The Quartet’s large discography includes the chamber music of Brahms and the Bartók quartet cycle. Quartet-in-residence at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, since 1992, the ensemble directs the internationally renowned string program and Quartetfest, an intensive Spring-term seminar where the Tokyo, Ying and Colorado quartets have been among the eminent guest faculty. The members of the Quartet are violinists Jeremy Bell and Jerzy Kaplanek, violist Christine Vlajk and cellist Simon Fryer.

Beckie Peters Edler graduated in 2007 with a master’s in collaborative piano from the University of Manitoba where she studied with Judy Kehler Siebert and Laura Loewen. A busy accompanist in Winnipeg, she plays for students at the University of Manitoba, for the University of Manitoba Opera Apprentices, and for the Manitoba Opera Chorus. Recently named music director for The Little Opera Company in Winnipeg, she has also participated in Opera NUOVA for the past two years, working with Michael McMahon, Rosemary Thompson and Gordon Gerrard. She has been a participant in the University of Manitoba’s Contemporary Opera Lab for the past three summers, studying with John Hess and Karl Paulnack, and for the past two summers has been the program administrator. Before her master’s, she studied with Bonnie Nicholson, earned a bachelor’s in piano performance from the University of Saskatchewan, and won the 2003 Young Artist solo recital tour which took her throughout Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Over the past two decades, in solo, chamber music and concerto performances of repertoire old and new, Joseph Petric has brought the accordion’s artistry and authenticity to venues as diverse as Tanglewood’s Seiji Ozawa Hall, London’s South Bank, and Washington’s Kennedy Center. He has performed at numerous new music societies and international festivals, with orchestras, including the BBC Concert, Toronto and Quebec symphony orchestras and Concertante di Chicago, and on radio and television in Canada, the United Kingdom and Europe. He has received distinguished awards and his commissions resulted in longstanding collaborations with the Penderecki String Quartet, Witold Lutowslawski and an international roster of composers. The Petric-Forget Duo has performed accordion/oboe arrangements of Bach’s organ trio sonatas to great acclaim in New York, Canada, and the United Kingdom. At the Vienna Schubertiade in 2009-10, he will perform with tenor Christoph Pregardien and the Pentaèdre wind quintet the European premiere of Normand Forget’s chamber music version of Die Winterreise.

Born and raised in Toronto, Joe Phillips is a double-bassist with a wide range of musical interests, and a busy freelancer in the Toronto area. He is principal bass of Orchestra London Canada, and as chamber musician, plays with the Via Salzburg chamber orchestra and Art of Time Ensemble in Toronto. He also has a real love for accompanying singers and great songs in many genres. He has recently performed or recorded with such diverse artists as Sarah Slean, Patricia O’Callaghan, the Wailin’ Jennys, Jenny Whiteley and Gregory Hoskins, and has written orchestral arrangements for blues diva Rita Chiarelli. In the world of traditional folk music, he plays with Franco-Ontarian fi ddler and Juno nominee Pierre Schreyer.

Robert Pomakov, a recent graduate of the Curtis Institute and not yet 30 years old, has already earned attention for his unique voice and musicianship in opera, concert and recital. Performances of the past season included returning to the Canadian Opera Company in Janácˇ ek’s From the House of the Dead and in Tosca, his Minnesota Opera debut in Dvorˇák’s Rusalka, a concert version of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin at the Lanaudière Festival, and Handel’s Messiah with the Pacific Symphony. He also made his debut with the Washington, DC Choral Arts Society, and at Madrid’s Teatro Real opposite Samuel Ramey. Among many notable performances of earlier seasons are his Washington Opera debut in Don Giovanni conducted by Plácido Domingo, Toronto’s Roy Thompson Hall Millennium Opera Gala, and an opera gala with the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra. A fi nalist in Belgium’s Queen Elizabeth Competition and prize winner in Vienna’s Belvedere Competition and Plácido Domingo’s Operalia, he has also been decorated by the Republic of Bulgaria.