Performances with Student Soloists
One of the greatest pleasures I have as an educator is to see my students grow as individuals and musicians and accomplish great things in their careers. Sometimes, I even have the good fortune to work with them as featured soloists with different ensembles. I have been blessed with two such opportunities this spring.
As part of the final concert of this, my first season as music director of the Milton Philharmonic Orchestra, I got to perform Marjan Mozetich’s sublime Concerto for Bassoon, Marimba and Strings with bassoonist Taran Massey-Singh and percussionist Cassandra Wolff. Taran has just completed the third year of his undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto and is a passionate and creative artist on bassoon. (April 2026 update: after graduating from UofT, he is set to do a master’s degree in contemporary music performance at the Mannes School of Music in New York City!) Cassandra is a gifted percussionist and one half of the duo Mirrored Percussion; she was my student during her graduate degree at UofT several years ago.
The concert was called “Modern Classics”, and all three works on the program exhibit both a modernist sensibility and some kind of reflection on the past. We opened with Grieg’s music to Peer Gynt, which uses familiar forms and simple harmonies but presages film music in its emotional directness. The Milton Phil has grown musically over the course of the year, and so I thought it fitting that we ended the season with Carl Nielsen’s fiery and challenging Symphony No. 1, which takes on the classical symphonic model with a decidedly forward-looking harmonic and formal approach.
The second opportunity is coming up as part of the final concert of the Rouge River Winds season, called “Myths & Legends II”. The centrepiece of that show will be 2025 Solo Competition second-place winner and another former student from UofT, Piper Shiels, performing Elizabeth Raum’s Sherwood Legend for solo French horn and band. Piper is currently completing her master’s degree in performance at the prestigious Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, studying with horn legend Denise Tryon. The program will also include music by John Mackey and Timothy Mahr, as well as a very new piece by Kevin Lau called Wind, Sand and Stars, inspired by the charming story of Le Petit Prince.
