Come and join the Hart House Chorus for our 2014-2015 Fall Concert, How They So Softly Rest. We'll be performing works by Canadian composers Willan, Daley, Raminsh, as well as di Lasso and Elgar, and featuring cellist Brenton Chan. This repertoire will also be presented in Belgium at the festival "1000 Voices for Peace", commemorating 100 years since the start of the First World War. We look to blend songs of loss and remembrance with songs of love and hope. We hope that you'll enjoy!

We will be performing the the beautiful Hart House Great Hall, and as always, the concert will be free!

Musician Bios

David Bowser, Conductor: David Bowser is Founder and Artistic Director of the Mozart Project and conducts the Toronto Mozart Players. He is Music Director and Conductor of the Hart House Chorus and the Oakville Choral Society. David is an active guest conductor, composer, university instructor and vocal coach, and is a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto. David studied flute at the Conservatoires de Musique in Tours and in Paris before earning a Master of Music degree in composition at the University of Toronto. He completed a Diplme dEtudes suprieures II Masters Degree in conducting under Raffi Armenian at the Conservatoire de Musique in Montreal where he studied voice with Marie Daveluy. He continued studies in orchestral and operatic conducting at the Hochschule fr Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna with Leopold Hager and entered the summer conducting classes of Gianluigi Gelmetti at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, Italy. He engaged in private studies and consultations with Sir Simon Rattle and Dennis Russell Davies and has participated in many conducting clinics and masterclasses with Eric Ericson, Georg Tintner and Gustav Meier, among others. He is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including the Ontario Arts Councils Chalmers Performing Arts Grant, the Canada Councils Professional Development Grant and the Victor Feldbrill National Graduate Fellowship and Eaton Fellowship from the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto.

David has conducted music for ballet, opera, film, television and the concert stage, and has performed in Canada, the United States, France, Austria, Italy, Slovenia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. He has been music director of the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, the Brantford Symphony Orchestra and the North York Concert Orchestra. He has also served as assistant conductor of the Orchestre Symphonique de Quebec and the Nova Scotia Opera. David has conducted the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the Waterloo Chamber Players, the Hart House Orchestra, the Cathedral Bluffs Symphony Orchestra and the National Youth Orchestra. He has appeared on both national language networks of the CBC television and radio, and has recorded music for the Oprah Winfrey Show including the ABC primetime special, Legends. In Europe, he has performed on the podium of the Kromeriz Symphony Orchestra in the Czech Republic, the Maribor Philharmonic Orchestra in Slovenia, the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra and East Slovak State Opera in Kosice, Slovakia. More recently he conducted Gershwins Porgy and Bess with the Nassau City Opera in the Bahamas. This season David will conduct the Hart House Chorus at the 2014 Flanders Music Festival in Belgium commemorating the start of the First World War.

Suzanne Yeo, Accompanist: Suzanne Yeo is a Toronto-based pianist who has performed in North America, Europe and Asia. She previously studied comparative literature at Northwestern University and German literature at Princeton University, but since her return to music she has established herself as an active soloist and accompanist with a particular interest in vocal repertoire; she also maintains a private piano teaching practice.

She is a Licentiate and Fellow of the Trinity College of Music London LTCL, FTCL and has studied with William Pengelly and Spiro Kizas in Toronto; she recently obtained her M.Mus. in piano performance from the University of Toronto, where she studied with Henri-Paul Sicsic.

Brenton Chan, Cellist: Brenton Chan is currently completing his Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto where he is a teaching assistant of Professor Shauna Rolston. A featured artist and arranger at the Music in the Morning series this past March, Brenton performed alongside Shauna Rolston, Barry Shiffman, and Joseph Elworthy at the Vancouver Academy of Music and at CBC Radios Studio One. Not a stranger to CBC Toronto, Brenton performed in John McDermotts fundraiser Music in the Key of Giving at the Glenn Gould Studio in 2012. Devoted to children, Brenton is a teacher at the Classical Music Conservatory on Roncesvalles.