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U of T musicians nab top prizes at OSM competition
December 17, 2011-
Baritone Geoffrey Sirett and trombonist Vanessa Fralick, both recent
graduates of the Faculty of Music, won top prizes at the 2011 OSM
Standard Life Competition 2011. The competition took place at the Tanna
Schulich Hall of the McGill University Schulich School of Music, in
Montreal, from November 23-26, 2011.
Vanessa Fralick, was awarded the 1st prize in the brass category which consists of a $10,000 Standard Life Scholarship.
Geoffrey
Sirett, was awarded the 2nd prize in the voice category which consists
of a $5,000 scholarship offered by the Fondation Paul A. Fournier.
Furthermore, he was awarded the prize for the best performance of a
Canadian work (by professor emeritus Derek Holman) in his category.
Baritone Geoffrey Sirett
is a recent graduate of the University of Toronto where he completed a
Master of Music degree in Opera under the tutelage of Lorna MacDonald.
Geoffrey holds a Bachelor of Music and Artist Diploma from the
University of Western Ontario, where he received the UWO Alumni Gold
Medal. On stage he has performed leading roles in Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Cosi fan tutte, Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, Bernstein’s Candide, Haydn’s Il Mondo della Luna, Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, Lehar’s The Merry Widow, Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis, Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, and Britten’s Albert Herring.
Vanessa Fralick is Acting Associate Principal Trombone with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. She completed her
undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto under the instruction
of Jeff Hall and Gordon Wolfe of the Toronto Symphony.
She completed one year of her master's degree at the Juilliard School
before leaving to perform with the San Antonio Symphony in 2009-10. The
2010-11 season found her with the St. Louis Symphony as Acting
Associate Principal Trombone. Fralick is supported by a grant from the
Canada Council for the Arts, which has allowed her to continue her
studies with the New York Philharmonic’s Principal Trombone, Joseph
Alessi, and also take lessons with Boston Symphony trombonists Toby Oft
and Norman Bolter. She studied for one year with James Box at McGill
University, where she performed as a sub with the Montreal Symphony.
She has also recently played with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra
and the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Pops. This past summer she was
selected to be a member of the prestigious Verbier Festival Orchestra
in Switzerland, and she performed as a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music
Center.
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