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Canadian soprano Lorna MacDonald enjoys a career of distinction as an active performer, voice teacher, Professor of Voice and the Lois Marshall Chair in Voice Studies at the University of Toronto. From 1994-2007 she served as Head of Voice Studies, and she is a recipient of Ontario’s prestigious OCUFA Award for “teaching excellence and outstanding contributions to university teaching”. MacDonald heads up a graduate program in Voice Pedagogy in which she combines the rich worlds of science, education and art to prepare a new generation of young singers and voice teachers.
Lorna MacDonald’s performance career spans continents and genres. Her love of chamber music, solo recitals, opera, oratorio and premièring new compositions for voice continues with Canadian press reviews including
“fiery soprano MacDonald dazzles”,
“showcasing the expressive voice of soprano Lorna MacDonald” (Toronto Star)
“an absolute jewel” (Edmonton Journal)
“astonishing in its brightness, agility and projection” (Halifax), and
“bright and sparkling” (Toronto).
Her 2006 CBC concert of Mozart’s Exsultate Jubilate and Buxtehude’s Singet den Herrn was reviewed,
“MacDonald’s freshness of tone, her clarity of style and diction, and her beautifully expressive musicianship are served by a perfection of technical mastery which allows her to sing both softly and full on any note in her entire range, as meaning and emotional imagery require.” (Halifax Herald)
In 2007, a cherished début in Los Angeles’ Disney Hall was in a new performance edition by Doreen Rao of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass.
The 2009/10 concert season included MacDonald’s multi-media production “Lois Marshall in Russia” with pianist Che Anne Loewen in Toronto, Ottawa, and Halifax, and which was reviewed
“MacDonald’s clear, agile soprano is lighter than Marshall’s was…but she is an outstanding artist in her own right”.
Collaborations with trumpeter Gillian MacKay and pianists Lydia Wong and Jamie Parker, a duet recital with mezzo-soprano Kimberly Barber and pianist Stuart Hamilton, and performances at Hart House and the Toronto Centre for the Arts completed the season. In the Canadian staged première, Lorna sang the title role in Mozart’s Zaide for Opera Nova Scotia in May 2010
"the clarity and purity of her voice balances the more robust voices in the ensembles."
In November she performs with pianist Steven Philcox and clarinetist Peter Stoll in a chamber music recital. March 2011 includes a return to ONS singing Antonida in Glinka’s Ivan Susanin. Her performances and master classes have taken her throughout Canada and the US, in Wales, Taiwan, mainland China, France, Ireland, the UK, Germany, Austria, and Bermuda. Lorna is an active adjudicator of major festivals and competitions (Metropolitan Opera National Council, Canadian Opera Company, Canadian National Music Competition Finals, Eckhardt-Grammatée, the Canadian JUNO awards). The Toronto Star noted her as a “master of transformation” in a master class at the Canadian Opera Company.
Lorna teaches undergraduate and graduate voice majors at the University of Toronto, and she has a private studio of professional singers who are performing throughout Europe and North America, on Broadway, in film, Grammy and Juno nominated artists in popular music, art song and opera. A graduate of Dalhousie University and the New England Conservatory of Music, with additional studies in the US and Europe, she maintains strong ties with her birthplace in Port Morien, Nova Scotia.
< lorna.macdonald@utoronto.ca > http://www.music.utoronto.ca/faculty |