CISHI is guided by co-founder and award-winning harpist, Gianetta Baril. She is joined by her mentor, the world-renowned phenomenon Judy Loman and the vibrant American harpist and composer, Julia Kay Jamieson. Julia is excited to share her expertise in jazz and arranging while Judy will give workshops and masterclasses focusing on technique, pedagogy and repertoire. We are also delighted to announce that the vibrant and multi-talented Canadian harpist Ellen Gibling has come on board as a teaching assistant.
Ellen Gibling is a versatile pedal and lever harpist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her undergraduate studies in harp performance were with Jennifer Swartz at McGill University in Montreal (2009). She has since performed with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, the World Youth Orchestra of Jeunesses Musicales, and Symphony Nova Scotia, and currently enjoys an active performing career on Canada’s east coast. She appears regularly with chamber groups, choirs, traditional bands, and opera productions, and has been in the recording studio with pop artists including Jenn Grant, Erin Costelo, and Lennie Gallant. She has performed in the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, the Halifax Jazz Festival, Scotia Festival of Music (Halifax), the Halifax Summer Opera Festival, and Opera on the Avalon (St. John’s, Nfld).
In 2015, Ellen joined forces with Erin Dempsey (wooden flute) to form the Irish traditional duo Ragged Robin. Their debut album “Deep in the Tangled Wood” (2017) was nominated for Music Nova Scotia’s Roots/Traditional Album of the Year, and they have been featured at Celtic Harmonies Festival in Quebec and the Halifax Celtic Festival. Ellen is a member of New Hermitage, a four-piece improvisation ensemble that sprung out of Jerry Granelli’s Creative Music Workshop. The ensemble released its debut recording “New Hermitage One” last year and will be performing at the upcoming Canadian New Music Forum in Montreal, 2018. Ellen plays with flutist Jack Chen in Conundrum, a duo committed to exploring the flute and harp repertoire with a particular focus on through-composed Canadian new music. She is also part of The Heavy Blinkers, an orchestral pop band with vocals, strings, and winds.
Ellen is intrigued by interdisciplinary collaboration and has worked increasingly with dancers and theatre artists over the last few years. In 2017, she wrote and performed in a chamber music show for children, Deep Sea Conundrum, an educational production featuring classical flute and harp repertoire, dance, and story-telling. Since 2014, she has been part of the creative team for Burnwater:Alchemy, an immersive show by Mocean Dance and Hear Here Productions combining blacksmithing, dance, music, and installation design.
Ellen is the harp instructor at Acadia University, where she coaches harpists who are studying the instrument as part of their music therapy degrees, and at the Maritime Conservatory of Performing Arts, where she has a lively studio with students of all ages and musical interests. This coming September, she will be taking a year-long leave from teaching to pursue a master’s degree in Irish Traditional Music Performance at the University of Limerick in Ireland.
Gianetta Baril has had a distinguished solo career for over 30 years, consistently receiving glowing praise for her charming presence, dramatic artistry and spectacular technique. Originally from Edmonton, studies took her to Toronto and then to France to work with the Master Pierre Jamet. In the mid-80’s, Gianetta moved to Germany where she lived for 16 years, concertizing throughout Europe, including both Poland and the then Czechoslovakia prior to the fall of the Iron Curtain.
During this time, Gianetta recorded two harp concerti with the Edmonton Symphony. The recording won the 1989 Juno Award for the Best recording of a Canadian work for the Concerto by Oskar Morawetz and earned this review from the French magazine “Repertoire des disques Compactes”: “Her playing, its’ elegance, precision, coloured passion as well as the refined intimacy which it imposes, is a gift for the ears.” Her performance of that same work in the incredible Rudolphinum concert hall in Prague stands out as a highlight in a career filled with memorable moments, including performing for the Queen, Prince Charles and the late Lady Diana. In April 2016, she was honoured to present the opening recital of the First São Paulo HarpFest in Brazil, introducing the audience to the full sound palette of the harp in traditional and contemporary Canadian harp repertoire.
Gianetta also has a passion for mentorship, carrying on the legacy of her studies with the inimitable Judy Loman. She has an active teaching studio at MRU Conservatory and is co-founder of the Canadian International Summer Harp Institute. During a sabbatical in 2015, Gianetta established two harp classes in music social projects in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. These exceptional programmes open the horizon for underprivileged children from the favelas through the gift of music lessons and involvement in an orchestra, providing them with a safe community of peers in which to thrive. In preparation for this volunteer work, Gianetta began an intensive fund-raising initiative “Harping for Harps” which, to date, has facilitated the donation of 6 harps as a starting point for 4 different projects in Brazil.
She now returns each year to give masterclasses and to maintain her volunteer teaching commitments. For more information on her ongoing “Harping for Harps” fundraising initiative, please visit her website: www.forloveofharp.com.
Recognized as one of the world’s foremost harp virtuosos, Judy Loman graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music where she studied with the celebrated harpist Carlos Salzedo. She became principal harpist with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 1960. As a soloist, Judy Loman has won the admiration of audiences and critics alike across Canada, the United States, Europe and Japan. The Toronto Symphony Orchestra has featured her as soloist on several tours and she has appeared as guest artist with numerous other orchestras and ensembles worldwide. She has participated in many of North America’s music festivals and several of her performances have been filmed by Rhombus Media and aired on public television.
A prolific recording artist, her extensive discography includes Judy Loman Favorites (Marquis Classics); Illuminations (Marquis Classics); Dance of the Blessed Spirits and 20th Century Music for Flute and Harp with Nora Shulman, flute (Naxos); Harp Showpieces (Naxos); A Baroque Harp (Marquis Classics); and Musique de chambre française (Marquis Classics). She recently released a 2 CD album called Ariadne’s Legacy of all of the works for harp by R. Murray Schafer played by the harpists who commissioned them. Through these projects, she has been a recipient of Canada’s JUNO Award for Classical Recording of the Year and the Canada Council’s Grand Prix du disque Canadien. In addition to performances of traditional harp repertoire, Ms. Loman has commissioned several new works for her instrument by Canada’s foremost composers, including John Weinzweig, R. Murray Schafer, Glenn Buhr, Kelly Marie Murphy and Srul Irving Glick. She has introduced these compositions worldwide through her recordings and recitals in North America, Europe, Israel, and Japan. Highlights of her career have been the presentation of concertos by R. Murray Schafer, Glenn Buhr and Kelly Marie Murphy at several World Harp Congresses. Always seeking to add to the harp repertoire, she is active in transcribing classical and baroque works for the harp from the piano repertoire, as well as arranging folk and Christmas music for voice and harp.
A dedicated teacher, Judy Loman is a Visiting Artist at The Curtis Institute of Music, Adjunct Professor of harp at the University of Toronto, a Fellow of The Royal Conservatory and Instructor of harp at The Glenn Gould School of Music. She gives master-classes worldwide and has adjudicated at the International Harp Contest in Israel, the USA International Harp Contest, and The Vera Dulova International Harp Competition in Moscow.
In June of 2002 Ms. Loman retired from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra to devote her time to teaching, recording, concertizing, and publishing of her arrangements and transcriptions. To celebrate this new turn in her career the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation commissioned a Concerto for harp and orchestra by Canadian composer Kelly-Marie Murphy that she premiered on June 12, 2002. In 2016 Judy Loman was made a member of The Order of Canada for her contribution to the Arts in Canada.
Julia Kay Jamieson is an energetic performer, dedicated teacher, composer and award-winning harpist living in Champaign, Illinois. A passionate advocate for new music, she is the principal harpist of the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, has given numerous world premiere performances and has performed in SEAMUS (Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States) conferences. Julia was the featured concert artist, clinician and composer for events including the 2017 and 2012 annual Harp Day in Eugene, Oregon, the 2012 Illinois Summer harp class, and the 2014 High Cascade Harp Camp in Suttle Lake, OR. She is a regular faculty member and featured presenter at the Canadian International Summer Harp Institute. She has been commissioned to write several harp ensemble pieces, including “Sea” and “Locomotive” for the Illinois Summer Harp Class. As a founding member of the quartet, The HarpCore 4, Julia has innovatively arranged and performed popular music throughout the country, including a performance in the 2015 Midwest Harp Festival in Tulsa, Oklahoma and the 2010 American Harp Society National Conference in Tacoma, Washington.
As a professional harpist, she won First Prize in the 2002 American String Teachers Association (ASTA) National Biennial Solo Competition. Julia was the winner of the School of Music Concerto Competition Finals in 2008; she was awarded a performance of Rodrigo’s Concierto di Aranjuez with the University of Illinois Symphony Orchestra. She has also been a soloist with the Illinois Symphony Orchestra (2010) and the Danville Symphony Orchestra (2018 and 2009). Julia studied with Jocelyn Chang in Cleveland for over a decade, Susann McDonald at Indiana University (BM), and Ann Yeung at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (MM) where she served as the teaching assistant in harp. During her tenure as teaching assistant, she was awarded the highest teaching honor at the University of Illinois: the Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (2009).
Julia’s interest in harp pedagogy has led her to writing teaching materials including “The Young at Harp” – a method/solo book for beginning harpists, giving several workshops and master classes for harpists and composers and writing articles for The American Harp Journal. During the summer of 2015 Julia gave “fearless improv” workshops for the American Harp Society Summer Institute in Logan, Utah and in 2016 she was a co-director of the youth harp ensemble “Create, Collaborate, Arpeggiate” for the AHS National Conference in Atlanta. Julia serves on the American Harp Society Board as a Director-at-large, is chair of the Music Education Auditions and Evaluations Committee as well as chair of the AHS Young Composers Project, a new educational program that encourages young harpists to write for their instrument. (juliakayjamieson.com)