German soprano Simone Kermes is one of the most sought after sopranos internationally for dramatic coloratura roles. Her remarkable vocal range singles her out in particular for the virtuoso works of the baroque masters such as Handel and Vivaldi and also for soprano and concert arias by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven.

Simone Kermes was born in Leipzig and studied at the 'Felix-Mendelssohn Bartholdy' conservatory in her home town.  She won first prize at the Felix-Mendelssohn Bartholdy Competition in Berlin and was winner of the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig.

Ms Kermes has made numerous recordings which include works from Vivaldi to Humperdinck in addition to many radio and TV broadcasts.

ERATO Ensemble: Vancouver's Professional Art-Song Chamber Ensemble. Est. 2006.

Iranian-Canadian Composer and Pianist - Pianist and Co-Founder of Piano Pinnacle - Doctor of Musical Arts, University of Michigan

Born in Wales in 1969 and brought up in Warwickshire, Julian Philips studied music at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and is one of Britain’s most versatile composers. His music has been performed across the world at major festivals and venues including the BBC Proms, Tanglewood Music Festival, Welsh National Opera, Glyndebourne and Wigmore Hall, by international artists including Gerald Finley, Dawn Upshaw, Sir Thomas Allen, the Vertavo String Quartet and BBC orchestras.
With a particular affinity for music for voice, Philips has been critically acclaimed for song settings of Emily Dickinson, e e cummings, Dylan Thomas and Langston Hughes among others, most recently a new cycle for baritone, cello and harp, Turning Fifty (2019) based on the poetry of Judith Wright. Love Songs for Mary Joyce (2016), commissioned by Wigmore Hall for tenor James Gilchrist and pianist Anna Tilbrook, sets a series of late love poems by John Clare. His choral music is similarly celebrated and is included in the Choirbook for the Queen (Church Music) as well as being commissioned for the BBC Proms (Sorrowfull Songes).
As Glyndebourne Opera’s first ever Composer-in-Residence, Philips completed two chamber operas in 2006-9: Followers, a site-specific promenade opera with a libretto by Simon Christmas, and The Yellow Sofa with a libretto by Edward Kemp, subsequently featured in Glyndebourne’s tour and shortlisted for a British Composer Award. The year-long development of Knight Crew was filmed by BBC Television and the resulting series, Gareth goes to Glyndebourne, aired in June 2010. Philips’ opera How the Whale Became, a collaboration with Edward Kemp, was based on Ted Hughes’s The Dreamfighter and other creation tales, and was written for the Royal Opera House’s Christmas 2013/14 season. His most recent full-length opera, The Tale of Januarie, was staged by the Guildhall School in Spring 2017, boasting perhaps the first libretto in Middle English by Stephen Plaice, and based on Chaucer’s The Merchant’s Tale. A new primary school children’s opera, Henny Penny (2021), offers its participants an immersive experience both in music and modern language learning, with versions in French (Cocotte Chocotte), German (Hennig Pfennig) and Spanish (Pollita Chiquita).
Ballet and opera are natural progressions for Philips, who already has an impressive track-record in composing for the theatre and has written two full-length ballets for choreographer Michael Corder and English National Ballet; a ballet based on Les Liaisons Dangereuses was followed by The Snow Queen in 2007. Symphonic works also form Philips’ oeuvre with All that remains commissioned to commemorate the centenary of the beginning of World War I receiving its world premiere by the National Orchestra of Belgium. Ballades Concertantes, for solo viola and double bass with chamber orchestra, premiered with Virginia Slater, Stacey Watton, and the Orchestra of the Swan in 2017, conducted by David Curtis.
A vital force in education, Philips is the Head of Composition at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama where he was made Honorary Fellow in 2007, and conferred a Professorship in 2014. He was responsible for the creation of both a new Masters Programme in Opera-Making & Writing and a Doctoral Composer-in-Residence scheme in association with the Royal Opera House.
Recent projects include a new oboe quintet, Through Silence (2020) for Wigmore Hall, and a set of folk song creative transcriptions, Melodys of Earth and Sky (2021), for violin and clarinet that draw on the two books of fiddle tunes collected by poet John Clare. The work was released on NMC Recordings in March 2022, reaching no 10 in the classical charts. In October 2022, The Country of Larks for tenor, horn and piano – a setting of Robert Louis Stevenson – receives its third performance at the Oxford Lieder Festival.
In August 2022, Julian Philips was featured composer at the Presteigne Festival, with six works featured including Barcarola for solo piano, Divertissement for chamber orchestra (based on his ballet score for Les Liaisons Dangereuses) and Looking West – a large-scale dramatic cantata for voices, actors and ensemble, (libretto by Rebecca Hurst), commissioned to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Other recent works include A Series of Strange Encounters for marimba and wind quintet, premiered by Evelyn Glennie at the Lake District Summer Music Festival in July 2023. Current projects include a series of John Clare settings for the vocal ensemble Exaudi and ongoing collaboration with the New London Chamber Ensemble, celebrating their 25th Anniversary, with a series of chamber works.

Nova Scotian composer currently based in Vancouver, BC, where he lives with his wife Chihiro, their two cats Taro & Ponzu, and at one time a banana tree named Nana-chan (R.I.P.)

For more information, please visit my website:

David Sisco is performer, writer and voice teacher living in New York City. He currently teaches voice at Marymount Manhattan College. He is the Founder & Curator of The Directory of Contemporary Musical Theatre Writers, located online at www.contemporarymusicaltheatre.com. He has been an active member of the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop, where he met his collaborator of 10 years, Tom Gualtieri. Together, they have written FALLING TO EARTH and are currently writing I'M AFRAID, YOU'RE AFRAID: 448 THINGS TO FEAR AND WHY. David is a prolific art song composer, having won the 2010 NATS Composition Award for his song cycle, "Missed Connections." His songs and cycles are available at www.siscosong.com. For more information, you can also visit his website: www.davidsisco.com.

West Coast Outlaw Country. 
Which means we do whatever the hell we want!

After a long hiatus from playing professionally, I had a sudden meeting with a certain tárogató. This changed everything. 
One day, a Hungarian cellist friend from Kelowna rung me up and asked if I would head up to the Okanagan to perform a concert for the Okanagan Hungarian Society. To facilitate this happening, he shipped me his prized Stowasser tárogató, a German-made instrument considered the king of tárogotós. I was smitten. 
What followed was a round-the-world search for a tárogató to call my own. I called my favourite clarinet maker in Chile, Luis Rossi, who said he didn’t make tárogatós and suggested I try a maker (and former repairman of mine) in Toronto. Steve of Toronto said he couldn’t retool his clarinet shop to make me a tárogató, but he did suggest I contact Tóth & Tarsa of Budapest. Of course. Why didn’t I think of that first? Budapest!”
So, now I play a custom Albert-system cocobolo tárogató made by Toth & Tarsa of Budapest, Hungary, a replica Stowasser mouthpiece by Pillinger Mouthpieces of Middlesex, UK, a Kodama II ligature by Ishimori Wind Instruments of Tokyo, Japan, and Légère Signature synthetic reeds formulated by Guy Légère of Montréal, Canada.

Erato Ensemble is following