Celebrating 10 years of Rouge River Winds
In early 2016, the executive team leading a small community band operating out of the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus (UTSC) decided that they wanted to become an independent organization. Over the spring and summer, we looked for a new home for our rehearsals (eventually settling at Woburn CI) and tried to come up with a name for ourselves. Our members at the time came primarily from Pickering, Scarborough, and Markham, all places that already had community bands named after them. Instead, we looked to a body of water the flowed through all three places, and decided to call ourselves the Rouge River Winds. Officially debuting in the fall of 2016, the current season marks our 10th season under the RRW banner.
As part of the 10th anniversary planning, we asked our current members to vote on which pieces from our past programs they would like to revisit. I sprinkled a few pieces in our concerts earlier this season, but saved the most popular ones for our season finale concert, which is coming up on Saturday evening. The program for that concert will feature works from across our history, as well as a couple of pieces that look forward into our future. Rouge River Winds has been a steady source of joy for me over the last decade and more, both from the music-making and the community of musicians, and I am so proud and thrilled to be celebrating this milestone with them.
In other news, last month’s concert with the Milton Philharmonic Orchestra was a great success, especially the performance of Clara Schumann’s piano concerto with the fabulous soloist Sumi Kim. The recording of the “Romanze”, the sublime middle movement, is above. That concert closed out a great 2025-2026 season with the MPO, and I am already hard at work planning for next season’s shows!
With piano soloist Sumi Kim after her stellar performance with the Milton Philharmonic Orchestra
Finally, my esteemed colleague at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music, Dr. Gillian MacKay, whose courses I was covering during her sabbatical last year, has decided to retire from the faculty, after twenty incredible years of teaching and service. What’s more, I have been asked to continue directing the Wind Ensemble and teaching one section of instrumental conducting for the upcoming school year (and, presumably, until a search for a permanent replacement is undertaken). I had such a great time with those courses last year and am really looking forward to building on that work next year!