Our People
Artistic Directors
Dr. Laura Loewen
Praised for expressivity, virtuosity, and committed playing, Canadian collaborative pianist Laura Loewen has appeared in concerts throughout North America and in Europe, Asia and South America. Dedicated to sharing her passion for ensemble playing and coaching, she is Professor of Collaborative Piano and the Vocal Coach at the University of Manitoba’s Desautels Faculty of Music. She was a founding faculty artist of VISI (Vancouver International Song Institute) and is on the faculties of the NUOVA opera training program in Edmonton, Alberta and Été Musical de Barachois in New Brunswick.
Dr. Loewen recently accepted the position of Associate Dean (Undergraduate Programs) at the Desautels Faculty. A fundamental aspect of this role is developing and promoting health and wellness initiatives for the Faculty. Administrative work gives her the opportunity to continue and expand the work she has done with students across Canada; teaching and mentoring are important elements of Dr. Loewen’s career. She shares her love of ensemble playing through teaching at the university and at summer festivals and masterclasses. Her work as a vocal coach with both professionals and students is characterized by her philosophy of “Passionate Diction”.
An extremely versatile pianist, Dr. Loewen has performed extensively with singers, instrumentalists and chamber ensembles, and is equally comfortable in traditional and contemporary idioms. Loewen and duo partner, saxophonist Allen Harrington, have been performing together for more than a decade and are acclaimed for their virtuosic, musical, and electrifying performances.
Dr. Loewen holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree in Accompanying/Coaching from the University of Minnesota, where she was a fellowship student of Margo Garrett and Karl Paulnack.
Dr. Judy Kehler Siebert
Dr. Judy Kehler Siebert has connected powerfully with listeners in European concert halls, rural Canadian school gyms, Brazilian galleries, and venues from Lithuania to Mexico and Brazil to Alaska. Equally comfortable in many different genres, whether she’s performing as a solo pianist or chamber musician, whether she’s teaching, coaching or adjudicating, her goal is to be the best communicator possible, to speak the many languages of music with ease and immediacy, and to spark a connection with others.
Judy is a busy chamber musician, recently performing most frequently with University of Manitoba colleague Minna Rose Chung (cello) as the Nacka Duo, and with Minna and Oleg Pokhanovski (violin) as the Borealis Piano Trio. In 2015, they delighted audiences in England, Sweden, and Serbia. She has performed with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Winnipeg Winds Orchestra, and with the Asuncion Chamber Symphony Orchestra in Paraguay. She is also in demand as a soloist, with concerts in Canada, USA, France, England, the Netherlands, Spain, Paraguay, Sweden, Serbia, Bosnia and Italy.
Throughout her career, Judy has been a tireless advocate for new work and adventurous musical configurations. From her early work as a founding member of Quarks!—a trio of two saxophones and piano—through a flurry of years premiering and recording new pieces at Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s New Music Festivals, to more recent explorations of the common ground between classical and jazz practices with the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra and the Oceanic Jazz Orchestra, Judy champions music that is contemporary, relevant, and soulful. She has participated in twenty world premieres, including works she has commissioned personally or with ensembles, many of which have been recorded for CBC national radio broadcast, or for CD release.
Judy completed a Masters of Music in solo piano at the University of Toronto, and received her doctorate in Collaborative Piano from the Eastman School of Music (Rochester University, New York) under the mentorship of Dr. Jean Barr. She taught at six universities in Canada and the USA before returning to her native province. A passionate teacher and mentor, she is a Professor of Piano at the Desautels Faculty of Music, University of Manitoba, coordinating and coaching Chamber Music Ensembles, teaching solo piano, and collaborative piano in the Post Baccalaureate Diploma and in the Masters of Music Program Collaborative Performance Degree which she co-developed with colleague, Laura Loewen. She continues her twenty-year association with Project Paraguay, involving biennial residencies to mentor students and teachers in four centres. Numerous students have followed her back to Canada for undergraduate and Masters degrees.
In February 2020, Judy and Laura developed and organized the inaugural Dream Big conference for collaborative pianists at the Desautels Faculty of Music, the first such gathering in Canada. The Dream Big sequel in February 2024 will feature multiple ensembles performing music composed as a response to trauma or as a call to action, with a day of events on location and in partnership with the Canadian Museum of Human Rights.
Artistic Advisors
Margo Garrett
Margo Garrett has enjoyed a long career as an internationally performing pianist partnering noted singers and instrumentalists alike. With sopranos Kathleen Battle, Barbara Bonney, Elizabeth Futral, Beverly Hoch, the late Judith Raskin, Lucy Shelton, and Dawn Upshaw, as well as with violinists Jaime Laredo and Daniel Phillips, cellists Sharon Robinson, the late Stephen Kates, and clarinetist David Shifrin, Ms. Garrett has premiered over 35 works and recorded on Albany, CRI, Deutsche Grammophon (1992 Grammy for Best Vocal Recital), Dorian, Musical Heritage Society, Nonesuch, Orion and Sony Classical. Her 2018 Delos release of the works of Ernest Bloch with longtime partner, violist Paul Neubauer, was nominated for an International Classical Music Award.
Ms. Garrett co-directed the Collaborative Piano Department at New England Conservatory from 1986 to 1992, headed the Collaborative Piano department at The Juilliard School from 1985 to 1991 and, in 1992, became the first holder of the Ethel Alice Hitchcock Chair in Accompanying and Vocal Coaching at the University of Minnesota, the first privately endowed collaborative chair in the US. She returned in 2000 to The Juilliard School where she remained until May, 2018. Ms. Garrett taught at the Tanglewood Music Center’s Vocal Program from 1979 to 1997 and is again on its faculty since returning in 2016. From1999 through 2006, Ms. Garrett was Faculty Chair of The Steans Institute for Young Artist’s vocal programs at Chicago Symphony’s Ravinia Festival. She was awarded the 1989 American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP) Most Creative Programming Award.
Ms. Garrett has held frequent residencies in Europe, Asia, South America, and throughout North America; most recently at the University of Toronto, University of Missouri/Kansas City, and Houston Grand Opera Studio. From 2015 to 2023, Ms. Garrett was creator, first manager, and author of Collab Corner, the first regular column in the National Association of Teachers of Singing’s ‘Journal of Singing’, focused on collaborative and coaching issues and designed for a readership of both student and professional singers and pianists.
Jean Barr
Jean Barr is Professor Emerita of Piano Accompanying and Chamber Music at the Eastman School of Music, where she founded the collaborative piano degree programs in 1988. The first person in the United States to earn a doctoral degree in Accompanying, she studied with Gwendolyn Koldofsky at the University of Southern California. At the outset of her career, she was pianist for the master classes of Jascha Heifetz, Gregor Piatigorsky, William Primrose and Martial Singher.
Considered by many to be a pioneer in the field, Jean Barr has sought to develop a broad understanding of and appreciation for the collaborative arts by creating and directing graduate degree programs at a number of prestigious universities. She also worked closely with the Music Teachers National Association and the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy to establish a presence for collaborative artists within those organizations.
Much in demand as a guest lecturer and master teacher, Jean Barr has given classes in Asia, Europe, the former Soviet Union, and throughout the United States, as well as Australia and New Zealand. She has performed in the United States and abroad with such distinguished artists as James Dunham, Gerald Fischbach, Pierre Fournier, Donald McInnes, Eduard Melkus, Igor Ozim, Gabor Rejto, Mstislav Rostropovich, Eudice Shapiro, and Zvi Zeitlin.
Previous teaching positions include the University of Southern California, the University of Texas at Austin, Arizona State University and the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California. For many summers she was on the faculty of the International Workshops and recently enjoyed being at the Aspen Music Festival and School as a visiting faculty member in collaborative piano.
Jean Barr received the Eastman School of Music’s prestigious Eisenhart Award for Excellence in Teaching (1994); the University of Rochester’s Susan B. Anthony Lifetime Achievement Award (2004); The New York State Music Teachers Association Citation (2004); the Music Teachers National Association Achievement Award (2008); the National Conference on Piano Pedagogy’s Outstanding Service Recognition Award (2019), and the Eastman School of Music’s Centennial Award (2022).
Rena Sharon
Rena Sharon is the Professor of Collaborative Piano Studies at the University of British Columbia. A recipient of the UBC Dean of Arts award for research, teaching, and community outreach, she was an Associate at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies (PWIAS) from 2007, and a 2011-12 Distinguished Scholar in Residence, until the Institute closure in 2023. Born in Montreal, Sharon trained at Indiana University with Menahem Pressler, György Sebok, Josef Gingold, Franco Gulli, and Janos Starker. Awarded the Best Pianist Diploma at the Rio de Janeiro International Voice Competition, her 30-year performance and recording career included collaborations with Steven Isserlis, Martin Beaver, James Ehnes, Gary Hoffman, Scott St. John, Ben Heppner, Susan Platts among many internationally-renowned artists.
Prof. Sharon’s Art Song and Chamber Music pedagogy and related educational programs draw disciplinary arcs through co-creative academic and community collaborations and multi-media productions joining the arts with an array of humanities, healthcare, and science fields to explore ways in which classical musicians contribute to local and global initiatives in areas of health, wellbeing, social justice, intercommunal understanding, and collective planetary stewardship. As a passionate advocate of Art Song’s global music/poetry fusion and an expanding continuum of performance practices, Sharon has catalyzed, produced, or mentored many innovative pedagogical, scholarly, and performance projects designed to broaden and diversify its relevant outreach to global audiences. Some of her views are published in “Art Song Pedagogy and Performance Practice; Re-visioning the Realm in the 21st Century”, in The Routledge Companion to Interdisciplinary Studies in Singing, Volume II: Education; H.R. Gudmundsdottir, C. Beynon, K. Ludke, A. J. Cohen, eds. (published by Routledge, New York and London; 2020).
Sharon’s research in Art Song cognition, in collaboration with cognitive linguists Dr. Laurel Fais and the late Dr. Eric Vatikiotis-Bateson, has generated numerous lectures and conference presentations, including the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind, the International Symposium on Performance Science, the Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language Conference, and the Society for Music Perception and Cognition, and the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS). Their team presented findings in “Wiggle Room: How Gestural Parameters Affect Singer and Audience Cognition in Art Song Performance”, a co-authored chapter in Language and the Creative Mind; B. Dancygier, J, Hinnell, M. Borkent, editors (published by Center for Study of Language and Information, Stanford University 2014).
Their collaboration was launched in 2007 through a PWIAS International Roundtable entitled “Art Song Anima: Ambiguities, Authenticities, Auguries”, which brought together musicians, poets, historians, cognition psychologists, musicologists, philosophers, neuroscientists, physicians, music education researchers, and music therapists in conceptual discussions of Art Song’s multi-disciplinary realm. As an outcome of the Roundtable, Sharon was a Co-Investigator on the 2008 SSHRC Partnership Grant awarded to Dr. Annabel Cohen for the multi-year AIRS international research project Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing.
Since 2001 Sharon has studied Chamber Music negotiation and co-creation processes as models of non-hierarchic collaboration decision-making with transferable skill-sets of relevance to other realms. In 2004 and 2005 Prof. Sharon travelled to Rwanda to collaborate with Rwandan drummers and dancers. Since 2003, in association with UBC Professor of Law Michelle LeBaron, she has presented at multiple conferences, workshops, and summits for lawyers, mediators, and arts-based community facilitators both at the PWIAS, and at events in North America, Europe, and Africa, including the International Association of Collaborative Law Professionals, the International Association for Conflict Management, and invitational research gatherings at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies in South Africa. Sharon’s essays on related topics are included in Changing Our Worlds: Arts as Transformative Practice; M. LeBaron, J. Sarra, editors, (2018), and An Exploration of Fairness: Interdisciplinary Inquiries in Law, Science and the Humanities; Janis Sarra, editor (2013).
Sharon has advocated for Vancouver’s music therapy community for over 2 decades. In 2014, she collaborated with UBC medical colleagues Dr. Robin Hsiung and Dr. Lawrence Frisch, and music therapist Beth Clark to co-convene a 2014 PWIAS International Research Roundtable for medical researchers, music therapists, music cognition psychologists/neuroscientists, and performing artists: Bending the Knotted Oak: Music Therapy and Music Cognition Research in Management of Neurological Disorders; 2014.
As an outcome of that conference, Sharon is a co-founder of UBC’s Transcending Boundaries initiative (2019-) – a group of faculty and students from Music, Education, Medicine, Psychology, and Neuroscience who have produced and promoted transdisciplinary discussions, multi-modal performances, and cross-realm research collaborations.
Through a 2023 sub-grant from The SingWell Project at Toronto Metropolitan University, Sharon is the Principal Investigator for a current UBC-based multi-disciplinary research project entitled “Virtually Together: Do You Hear What I Hear? A Singing Collective Unites”. SingWell is an international research network, funded by 7-year SSHRC Partnership grant awarded to Dr. Frank Russo, in which Sharon is a research team member.
The UBC faculty/student team studies an online group-singing class created and facilitated by music educator Cynthia Friesen for the BC Brain Wellness Program at UBC’s Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health. The study explores the implementation and therapeutic impacts of online opportunities for arts-based collective expression, social connectedness, and wellbeing when in-person singing activities are not accessible. Learn more here.
Prof. Sharon is a member of the Steering, Research, and Conference Committees for the Music and Health Research Institute, established in 2021 by Professor Gilles Comeau at the University of Ottawa. The Institute facilitates the expansion of multi-disciplinary research/practice interactions across many fields, with a growing international continuum of institutional partnerships, researchers, and applied practitioners.
Artistic Team Members
Charlene Diehl
CHARLENE DIEHL is a writer, editor, and performer, and since 2003 the Director of the Winnipeg International Writers Festival. She received a PhD from the University of Manitoba in 1992, and was an English professor at the University of Waterloo before returning to her beloved Canadian prairies in 2000. She has published essays, poetry, non-fiction, reviews, interviews, academic studies, and several chapbooks. Her book Out of Grief, Singing: A Memoir of Motherhood and Loss (Signature Editions, 2010) was shortlisted for both the Alexander Kennedy Isbister Non-Fiction Award and the McNally Robinson Book of the Year. Also a lover of jazz, she was the associate editor of dig! magazine for a dozen years, has performed original poetry with her own jazz ensemble, and is now the producer of the Izzy Asper Jazz Performances series. In 2019, she received the Winnipeg Arts Council’s Making a Difference Award.
Alison Gagnon
Canadian pianist Allison Gagnon directs the collaborative piano program at UNCSA and concertizes with both vocal and instrumental colleagues. Before joining UNCSA in 1998, she was affiliated with both Queen’s University and McGill University in Canada. She was a member of the piano staff at the Meadowmount School of Music in New York for almost 20 years and has also spent summers at the Banff Centre in Canada and the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara. Gagnon has twice received the UNCSA Excellence in Teaching Award. Graduates of the collaborative piano program she launched more than 20 years ago are active professionally across the United States and abroad. Since 2019, she has served as faculty mentor for the “Music Between Us” initiative of UNCSA’s ArtistCorps, which provides interactive musicmaking in dementia care. Gagnon completed her D.M.A. with Anne Epperson at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Her earlier teachers were Dale Bartlett in Montreal, Michael Krist in Vienna, Pierre Jasmin and Margaret McLellan in Kingston and her mother Marjorie Gagnon. Her creative interests include ceramics and wildlife photography.
Martha Guth
Juno nominated soprano Martha Guth’s recital and concert highlights include Wigmore Hall, Lincoln Center, The National Cathedral (Washington D.C.), St. John Smith Square, Oxford Lieder, Leeds Lieder, The Toronto Symphony Orchestra, The Santa Fe Opera, Grazer Oper, The Chicago Philharmonic, and many more.
Joel Harder
Hailed as “truly remarkable”, a performer who keeps audiences “on the edge of their seats” (Operawire), acclaimed Canadian pianist Joel Harder is a sought-after collaborative partner, vocal coach, chamber musician and pedagogue. He has extensive experience in vocal coaching, with specific expertise in late 19th century French mélodies and German lieder. He has performed in Canada, the United States, England and continental Europe, at venues such as Alice Tully Hall, the Caramoor Centre for the Arts, Seiji Ozawa Hall, Bishopsgate Hall, the Beethoven Haus in Baden, Austria, and Carnegie Hall. Mr. Harder has worked with Maestros James Conlon, Christoph von Dohnanyi and Lorin Maazel, among others. He was staff pianist and coach at the Cincinnati May Festival, the Castleton Festival, Festival Lyrique Internationale de Belle-Ile en mer, Highlands Opera Studio, Chautauqua Opera Conservatory and Los Angeles Opera. He has given masterclasses on collaborative pianism at Binghamton University, the University of Alberta, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Cornell University, Vanderbilt University and Rutgers University. This Fall, Mr. Harder will return as a vocal pianist on Joyce DiDonato’s Masterclass Series at Carnegie Hall, filmed live on Medici TV.
A passionate purveyor of Art Song, Mr. Harder has been a regular artist with the Brooklyn Art Song Society (BASS) for 7 years, where he has performed works ranging from Schubert song cycles to newly commissioned world premieres. He has also been instrumental in creating staged and curated art song recitals as part of the re-imagined Castleton Festival, in partnership with tenor Dominic Armstrong, mezzo-soprano Rachel Calloway, Jonathan Beyer and program director Dietlinde Turban-Maazel.
Mr. Harder received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in collaborative piano from The Juilliard School, where he studied chiefly with Margo Garrett and Jonathan Feldman. He wrote his dissertation on the songs of French composer André Caplet, for which he received a Presser Award for research at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. From 2015 – 2022, Mr. Harder was on faculty at SUNY Binghamton as Assistant Professor, where he headed up a graduate program in Collaborative Piano. Currently he is artistic faculty at the Manhattan School of Music, and head opera coach at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University . He also manages a private coaching and teaching studio in Manhattan, where he lives with his wife and daughter.
Rebecca Hass
Rebecca Hass (Nitaawegiishigok) is Métis (Delaronde family) and ixed European. She lives her culture as a song maker and storyteller. A glorious mezzo-soprano who has appeared with just about every opera company and orchestra in Canada. Rebecca was the inaugural winner of the 2022 Nada Ristich changemaker Ruby Award from Opera Canada and serves on the board for Racial Justice with Opera America. As the inaugural recipient of the Sorel Award through Sparks and Wiry Cries she is currently composing for and curating a new work, The Song Blanket, honouring land and matriarchs. Rebecca Hass (Nitaawegiishigok) is Métis (Delaronde family) and mixed European. She lives her culture as a song maker and storyteller. A glorious mezzo-soprano who has appeared with just about every opera company and orchestra in Canada. Rebecca was the inaugural winner of the 2022 Nada Ristich Changemaker Ruby Award from Opera Canada and serves on the board for Racial Justice with Opera America. As the inaugural recipient of the Sorel Award through Sparks and Wiry Cries she is currently composing for and curating a new work, The Song Blanket, honouring land and matriarchs.
Alexandra Nguyen
A native of Montréal, Alexandra Nguyen maintains a diverse career as a collaborative pianist, teacher, and administrator. She has performed throughout the United States and Canada, with recent performances in Italy, Spain, and Malaysia at venues such as Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall (New York, NY) and the Teatro Nacional (Panama City, Panama). A sought-after collaborator, she has shared the stage with such artists as the Takács Quartet, cellist David Requiro, and bassoonist Peter Kolkay, a long-standing partnership.
Dr. Nguyen co-directs the graduate programs in collaborative piano at the University of Colorado Boulder and serves as Chair of the Collaborative Performance Committee for the Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy.
Erika Switzer
Pianist Erika Switzer, whose performances have been called “precise and lucid” (New York Times), and “intelligent, refined, and captivating” (Le Monde), collaborates internationally with singers and instrumentalists of her generation. Switzer is co-founder of the organization Sparks & Wiry Cries, which promotes the advancement and preservation of art song. She serves on the music faculty and directs the Collaborative Piano Fellowship at Bard College and holds a doctorate from The Juilliard School.
Carol Wiebe
As a family physician, chamber musician, and former hospital executive, Dr Carol Wiebe uses her broad training and experience to design opportunities and spaces where people can find meaning and heal. Carol studied music performance (piano, flute) before becoming a family physician and continues to enjoy performing. Her medical career shifted from HIV primary care to elder care, with a gradual transition into leadership, including several years as Vice President of Medical Affairs at Bruyère, a large healthcare organization in Ottawa.
In 2021, she completed an MBA (GEMBA-HLS: Global Executive MBA in Healthcare and the Life Sciences) at University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, using the opportunity to develop and launch Radical Connections.
Dr. Wiebe co-founded ConcertDocs in 2017 and Radical Connections in 2021, with both programs bringing the arts and a great deal of joy into healthcare.