Renata Van Vliet, composer

Renata is an emerging composer, living in Kingston, Ontario. She holds a Bachelor of Music from Queen’s University (2021), where she studied organ with Michael Capon and composition with Dean Burry and John Burge, and a Master of Music in Composition from the University of Ottawa (2023) where she studied under the guidance of John Armstrong. Her awards include the George N. Maybee Memorial Scholarship, the Maurice Dubin Prize in Composition, the Graham George Memorial Scholarship in Composition, and the Beaudry Somcynsky Prize in Classical Music Composition.

Renata’s music is often inspired by the mystery and vastness of nature. She likes to explore texture and timbre in her compositions and is especially drawn to harmony and layers of melody and counterpoint. Her compositions include choral music, organ and piano music, music for string quartet, percussion, orchestra and various chamber ensembles. She also enjoys electroacoustic composition and has recently started composing for visual media.

Renata’s music has been performed in various cities in Canada, including Kingston, Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal.  Her compositions have been featured with the Toronto Strings Composition Workshop and the Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra New Generation Film Composer’s Project, and her orchestral work, Cathedral of Trees, was chosen as an alternate with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra Explore the Score program.  Her organ piece, Cantilène, is in the process of being published with the Royal Canadian College of Organists.   Renata is a member of the Association of Canadian Women Composers and is also an Associate Composer with the Canadian Music Centre.

Kevin Hayward

KEVIN HAYWARD is a Canadian composer and trumpet player from Toronto, Ontario, currently studying trumpet performance and composition at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Music, where he is privileged to study with Anita McAlister and Yuhan Zhou. He has collaborated as a composer with the Weston Silver band and was the winner of the 2020 Hannaford Youth Band young composers’ competition. 

His fanfare ‘New Beginnings’ was recently performed at the 2024 University of Toronto New Music Festival by the U of T Wind Ensemble, under the direction of Dr. Gillian Mackay. 

Kevin has performed with the Weston Silver Band, the Etobicoke Philharmonic, Mississauga Symphony, and North York Concert Orchestras, and was a finalist in the 2021 Hannaford Youth Band Rising Stars solo competition. 

Nicholas Ma

Nicholas Ma (b. 2001) is a student pianist-composer completing a double major in Piano Performance and Composition in addition to a minor in Music Theory at McGill University’s Schulich School of Music.

At McGill, Nicholas obtained two consecutive Composer-in-Residence positions for the McGill Schulich Singers (2023/24) and Brass Quintet (2022/23), in addition to a McGill commission as a result of obtaining the Luba Zuk Piano Duo Composition Prize. He also received the Luba Zuk Scholarship in Piano Performance, the Frank Mills Scholarship, and the Paul-Marcel Gélinas et Verna-Marie Parr Gélinas Piano Award, enabling him to further his studies under the tutelage of Canadian composers Melissa Hui, Jean Lesage and Chris Paul Harman, as well as Georgian concert pianist Marina Mdivani.

Nicholas’ recent activities include a commission by the Coalition for Music Education in Canada to compose a celebratory song for 2022/23 based on Mimi O’Bonsawin’s lyrics as part of the Music Monday program, a yearly event where a song of celebration is sung by hundreds of thousands of children and youth in schools and communities across Canada. This work later received a SOCAN Young Composer Award in the Under 21 Choral Category.

Nicholas also served as the Vice-President of the McGill Association of Student Composers for the 2022-2023 year, in addition to being the Schulich Liaison for the Montréal Heart of the City Piano Program. He is currently experimenting with creating works that explore the boundaries between intertextuality, layered meaning, and humor.

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Qiushi Jiang

Qiushi Jiang is a Toronto-based composer whose music strives to bring a bit of magic to the mundane everyday life. He has composed music for a diverse array of settings, including film, opera, choir, orchestra, and video games. Some of his recent works have been performed by Cantabile Choirs of Kingston, UofT Opera, and Babεl Chorus. Qiushi holds a BMus in composition from the University of Toronto, where he studied with Abigail Richardson-Schulte, Alexander Rapoport, and Christos Hatzis. During his time of study, he was the recipient of the Arthur Plettner Scholarship and the Robert & Jean Elliott Mcbroom Scholarship. Qiushi is also the co-founder of AutumnRock.dev, a music technology startup where he works on building creative audio plugins and tools used by millions of music makers around the world.

 

Qiushi Jiang is a Toronto-based composer whose music strives to bring a bit of magic to the mundane everyday life. He has composed music for a diverse array of settings, including film, opera, choir, orchestra, and video games. Some of his recent works have been performed by Cantabile Choirs of Kingston, UofT Opera, and Babεl Chorus. Qiushi holds a BMus in composition from the University of Toronto, where he studied with Abigail Richardson-Schulte, Alexander Rapoport, and Christos Hatzis. During his time of study, he was the recipient of the Arthur Plettner Scholarship and the Robert & Jean Elliott Mcbroom Scholarship. Qiushi is also the co-founder of AutumnRock.dev, a music technology startup where he works on building creative audio plugins and tools used by millions of music makers around the world.

 
 

Benjamin Fraser

I was twelve when my parents told me I couldn’t be a Jedi when I grew up. So, I decided, I wanted to be a film composer.

Since then, I had the honor of scoring short 4 films in 2023: Cash Cow, by Shubham Chhabra, screened at VAFF (Vancouver Asian Film Festival); The Gift Of Life by Aviel Kurulkar, screened at the GRFF (Grand River Film Festival); and films with the Vancouver Film School and Nova Scotia College of Arts and Design.

Outside of film, my pieces premiered in the Nocturne Halifax Arts Festival (2023) and the Open Waters Festival (2024).  Additionally, I wrote for the Alkali Collective (2023) and The Rostova Quartet (2024).

Currently, I study Composition with Amy Brandon at Dalhousie University, where I have participated in workshops with The Bozzini Quartet and Conductor Karl Hizer.