About

Collaborators, Staff, and Board of Directors

• 
  Brian Current Artistic Director

  Brian Current (he/him) has conducted a wide range of contemporary repertoire and has championed over one hundred works by Canadian composers. Brian has been the main conductor of the Continuum Ensemble since 2011 and the Conductor of the Glenn Gould School (Royal Conservatory) New Music Ensemble since 2007. He has guest conducted with dozens of professional symphony orchestras, opera companies and ensembles across Canada and abroad.
  
  As a composer, he is known for creating large-scale compositions that build community, change and power. The River of Light is an evening-length oratorio designed to bring diverse communities together through the unifying power of music. Written in collaboration with writers from many different traditions, it describes mystical journeys towards an exalted state from many diverse points of view. Missing is 90-minute opera with Dene librettist Marie Clements based on the tragedy of Canada’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, sung in English and Gitxsan. Whirling Dervish features a traditional Sufi Whirling ceremony in front of a symphony orchestra. The Young Person’s Guide to New Music provides listening suggestions to listeners of all ages as to how to approach contemporary music while the orchestra demonstrates in real time. Upcoming projects include Infantry about the futility of soldiery, and Clarence and Anita, about systemic racism and misogyny surrounding the Clarence Thomas Senate Hearings. The impulse of these projects is rooted in inclusivity, impact and social justice, values that he brings to NMC’s activities.
  
  Brian Current holds a PhD in music composition on full scholarship from the University of California (Berkeley) where he studied conducting with David Milnes and Michael Morgan and was assigned the direction of the UC Berkeley symphony during summer sessions. He was subsequently awarded a fellowship in the prestigious National Arts Centre conductor training program where he studied under internationally renowned conducting mentor Jorma Panula and later attended conducting masterclasses in Royaumont, France under the Hungarian conducting luminary Péter Eötvös.
  
  His music, lauded and broadcast in over 35 countries, has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Barlow Prize for Orchestral Music (USA), the Premio Fedora (Italy) for Chamber Opera, and a Selected Work (under 30) at the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris. Brian’s pieces have been programmed by all major symphony orchestras in Canada and by dozens of professional orchestras, ensembles and opera companies worldwide, including portrait concerts dedicated entirely to his work.

• 
  Emily Schimp Director of Operations and Communications

  Emily Schimp (she/her) is an arts manager specializing in cultural event production, and community engagement. She holds a BFA from OCAD University and a Post-Graduate Certificate in Arts Administration and Cultural Management with Honours from Humber College. Currently the Director of Operations and Communications at New Music Concerts, Emily has also worked with organizations such as the Toronto Biennial of Art, ArtsPond, Humber College's Lakeshore Grounds Interpretive Center, and others across the GTA.

  In addition to her professional work, Emily is dedicated to giving back to her community through volunteer work. She sits on the Board of Management for Sankofa (formerly Yonge-Dundas) Square and has volunteered with the Harbourfront Centre, and as an Arts Facilitator with the YMCA's Newcomer Youth Leadership Development program. Emily has also been a member of the Youth Advisory Committee for Youth Rising Above. She has made a significant impact in promoting the arts and supporting youth development, education, and arts outreach. Her ultimate goal is to continue advancing the arts by developing accessible programs and promoting arts and cultural initiatives across Canada.

• 
  Teagan McCanny Development & Communications Coordinator

  Teagan McCanny (she/her) is an arts manager, artist and photographer. She has worked with various arts organizations across Toronto helping to create programming, marketing and developing fundraising strategies. Teagan is dedicated to helping promote new voices, create inclusive spaces and tell stories through art. In her artwork Teagan explores the play of light and dark in both photography and painting. She is interested in exploring various mediums and disciplines to broaden her own artistic pursuits. Teagan holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from OCAD University and a Post-Graduate Certificate in Arts Management from Centennial College.

• 
  Quinn McGlade-Ferentzy Digital Archivist

  Quinn McGlade-Ferentzy received their B.A. honours in philosophy from Trent University and an M.A. in philosophy from The University of Guelph. Their years of experience as a campus community organizer, playwright, and researcher have given them a powerful appreciation for documentation and preservation. They are especially interested in preserving the organizational history of activist movements, performance art, and marginalized groups. Having completed an LIT diploma from Seneca College, they are excited to pivot and begin a new chapter in their career.
  Their goal is to make information and archived material accessible to as broad a user base as possible and relish the challenge and impossibility of capturing the ephemeral nature of live music performances.

• 
  Sandeep Bhagwati Director of the Swara Sutras Ensemble 2021-2022 and 2023-2024

  Professor Sandeep Bhagwati is a multiple award-winning composer, theatre director and media artist. His compositions and comprovisations in all genres (including six operas) have been performed by leading performers at leading venues and festivals worldwide. He has directed international music festivals and intercultural exchange projects with Indian and Chinese musicians and leading new music ensembles. He was Professor of Composition at Karlsruhe Music University and Composer-in-Residence at the IRCAM Paris, ZKM Karlsruhe, Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, IEM Graz, CalArts Los Angeles, Heidelberg University and Tchaikovsky Conservatory Moscow.

  As Canada Research Chair for Inter-X Arts at Concordia University from 2006-2016, Professor Bhagwati founded and currently directs matralab, a research/creation center for intercultural and interdisciplinary arts. His current work centers on comprovisation, inter-traditional aesthetics, the aesthetics of interdisciplinarity, gestural theatre, sonic theatre and interactive visual and non-visual scores, interdisciplinary 'comprovisation,' live-dramaturgy, and experimental performance topologies.

  He has founded and is the musical director of three ensembles of trans-traditional experimental music in Montréal ("Ecstasies of Influence"), Berlin ("Extrakte") and Pune ("Sangeet Prayog"). He has worked with many of the leading musicians of our time, including Wu Wei, Catherine Milliken, Shubha Mudgal, Simon Rattle, Dhruba Ghosh, Dave Taylor, Uday Bhawalkar, Gebrüder Teichmann, Kiya Tabassian, Mark Applebaum, Aiyun Huang, Nicholas Isherwood, David Rosenboom, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, China Found Music Workshop, Ensemble Modern, Lori Freedman, Klangforum Wien, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, Jieun Kang, Jocelyn Clarke, Marie Annick Beliveau, Lorraine Vaillancourt, Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, Peter Ruzicka, Lau Bonitz, Moritz Ernst, Arraymusic, Bozzini Quartet, Sonar Quartett, Berner Streichquartett, etc. and with many artists in fields other than music.

• 
  Thomas LaGrange Volunteer

  Thomas LaGrange earned his Master of Music degree from the University of Toronto in 2022 and his Bachelor of Music degree at the University of Alberta, graduating in June 2020. He was the recipient of the U of T Fellowship in Music in the first year of his studies and the Nour Private Wealth Award in the second year of his studies at the University of Toronto. During his time at the University of Toronto he studied with Megan Hodge as well as the Associate Principal of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra Vanessa Fralick. At the University of Alberta he studied with members of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra Kathryn Macintosh, John McPherson, and Chris Taylor, as well as the Principal Trombonist of the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra, Erik Hongisto, as well as Alden Lowrey. He won the University of Alberta Concerto Competition in 2019, was a runner-up in the same competition in 2018 and was awarded the Harvard Broadcasting Award in his first year of studies at the University of Alberta.

• 
  Jennifer Tung Guest Conductor 2023-2024 (in collaboration with Tapestry's Women in Musical Leadership Program)

  Dora nominated (Gould’s Wall) Chinese-Canadian conductor Jennifer Tung leads a uniquely versatile career as music director and pianist, as Artistic Director of Toronto City Opera and Assistant Conductor to the Mississauga Symphony Orchestra. In 2020, Jennifer joined Tapestry Opera as a conductor in the inaugural Women in Musical Leadership program in partnership with Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Pacific Opera Victoria, where she served as Associate Conductor for the world premiere of Brian Current’s Gould’s Wall (Tapestry Opera) and a new production of Orfeo ed Euridice (Vancouver Opera).

  Jennifer has helmed productions of The Mikado, Sweeney Todd and Peter Brook’s Tragedy of Carmen for the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival, and in 2019, La Traviata for Opera York. She served as Assistant Conductor for the DORA Award winning opera Shanawdithit for Tapestry Opera and Opera on the Avalon.

  Jennifer serves on the faculty of Toronto’s Glenn Gould School and holds degrees in vocal performance and collaborative piano from the Eastman School of Music.

• 
  Robert Aitken Founding Artistic Director

  Flutist, composer, conductor Robert Aitken is one of Canada’s foremost performers, composers, and champions of contemporary music. After flute studies with Nicolas Fiore in Toronto (1955-59) he became principal flute of the Vancouver S. O. (the youngest principal in that orchestra’s history) while studying composition with Barbara Pentland at U.B.C. From 1960-64 he served as second flute of the C.B.C. Symphony Orchestra while studying at U. of Toronto in electronic music with Myron Shaeffer, composition with John Weinzweig and analysis with Oskar Morawetz whom he feels had an important influence on his artistic development.

  In 1970 Aitken founded and directed until 1972 the “Music Today” series at the Shaw Festival (Ontario) and in 1971 co-founded with Norma Beecroft “New Music Concerts” serving thereafter as artistic director. In 1977 he was one of 12 instrumentalists invited by Pierre Boulez to present a solo recital at IRCAM (Paris) playing solo pieces of Takemitsu, Morthensen, Fukushima, Globokar, Sigurbjörnsson, Y. Matsudaira, Holliger and himself. He has also been very active as a conductor with New Music Concerts (Toronto), with orchestras in Canada and Japan and in 1987 conducted the first performance of Schafer’s “Patria I” for the Canadian Opera Company.

  Among his many awards are the Order of Canada (1994), The Canada Music Citation (CLC 1969), the Wm. Harold Moon Award (PRO Canada 1982), the Canadian Music Medal (Canadian Music Council 1982), The Jean A. Chalmers National Music Award (1996) and “Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres” (France, 1997). In 2003 he was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Flute Association (USA). Some 50 works have been written for him by noted composers including Henry Brant, George Crumb, Elliott Carter, Toru Takemitsu, Roger Reynolds, Arne Nordheim, Manuel Enriquez, R. Murray Schafer, Gilles Tremblay, Bruce Mather, John Beckwith and John Weinzweig.