Ms. Harwood-Jones received her formal education at the University of Toronto, earning a Bachelor of Music in Performance. She has performed for many prestigious organizations, including Tafelmusik Chamber Choir, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Canadian Brass, Winnipeg Symphony, the Elora Festival Singers, the Elmer Iseler Singers, Sault Symphony Orchestra, Nexus, and Toronto Consort.
A few of Ms. Harwood-Jones’s appearances include Bach’s Magnificat with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bramwell Tovey, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Sault Symphony Orchestra, Handel’s Messiah with Mississauga Choral Society, Mozart’s Requiem with the Elora Festival Singers, Handel’s Dixit Dominus with Tafelmusik Chamber Choir, Einhorn’s Voices of Light with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and has appeared with the Nota Bene Baroque Players in their production of Bach’s Magnificat, conducted by Howard Dyck. Since 2016, she has been focusing on using her extensive knowledge of Early Music to develop a new ensemble, Kammerchor London, where she performs, manages, and directs. Ariel is also a piano technician, working with both private clients and Western University.
Ariel’s teaching experience spans 20 years. She first began teaching for a local private school where she taught high school music for 5 years. Since then, she has opened a private studio in her home and for the past 15 years has enjoyed encouraging students to find their own voice.
Stéphane Potvin
Maestro Potvin was born and raised near the city of Québec. He received his early music training in piano from the age of seven. Throughout high school he became interested in music leadership and more specifically choral and orchestral conducting. That desire brought him to Nicolet where he studied with the highly talented and dedicated soeurs de l’assomption. He then went on to McGill University to study in piano performance and choral conducting. He eventually received a master’s degree in choral conducting from the University of Illinois under the tutelage of Fred Stoltzfus. He is very privileged to have further studied conducting with Frieder Bernius, Otto Werner Mueller, and Gustav Meier to name a few.
During his time at McGill he studied voice privately with Louise Yard who introduced him to the old Bel Canto technique. At first, he thought this was a very strange way of learning to sing as almost all of it went against everything he had learned before and from different conductors. Only after about a year of lessons did he truly begin to understand and appreciate the benefits of the technique.
For many years he focused on his conducting career, but a few years ago he decided it was time to share his knowledge of healthy and efficient voice training. He opened his private studio and has been offering workshops and group classes in southern Ontario.
He recently resumed lessons with master teacher Carol Bagott-Forte (www.liberatedvoice.com) who is internationally recognized for her pedagogical skills and her profound understanding of the natural function of the voice.
Along with this website, he offers summer vocal training sessions for professionals and emerging singers and continues to train conductors to help them guide their singers to sing in a healthy way.
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