Vancouver International Song Institute

 

 

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. With undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral level voice majors at the University of Toronto, 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, and on major performing stages in art song and opera. Her students are major prize and arts award recipients.

 

Lorna MacDonald’s performance career spans continents and genres. 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. Canadian press reviews from recent seasons include “fiery soprano MacDonald dazzles”, “an absolute jewel” (Edmonton Journal) “astonishing in its brightness, agility and projection” (Halifax), and “bright and sparkling” (Toronto). Her 2006 CBC concert of Mozart and Buxtehude with Musique Royale 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, she made her début in Los Angeles’ Disney Hall in a new performance edition of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, and the 2009/10 concert season included MacDonald’s multi-media production “Lois Marshall in Russia” with pianists Che Anne Loewen and Stuart Hamilton in Toronto, Ottawa, and Halifax. 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", and March 2011 included a return to ONS singing Antonida in Glinka’s Ivan Susanin, and the Canadian première of Yi Chen’s work for soprano, cello and violin, sung in Chinese. In 2012 she sings Konstanze in Mozart’s Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail.

Lorna is an active adjudicator of major festivals and competitions such as Metropolitan Opera National Council, Canadian Opera Company, Canadian National Music Competition Finals, Eckhardt-Grammatée, and the Canadian JUNO awards. The Toronto Star noted her as a “master of transformation” in a master class at the Canadian Opera Company.

http://www.music.utoronto.ca/faculty
email: lorna.macdonald@utoronto.ca