Kathryn Whitney – Artistic Director
Kathryn Whitney is a singer, choral conductor, artistic director, voice teacher, and arts entrepreneur based on Southern Vancouver Island. She is absolutely delighted to be starting her term as Artistic Director of Via Choralis in July 2024.
Kathryn is the founding Artistic Director of the SING THE NORTH global family of choirs, the One World Baroque Virtual Orchestra & Chorus (created with Music Director, Daniel Taylor), the Pacific Song Collective (Victoria) and the SongArt Performance Research Group (London). She is also the Music Director of the Newcombe Singers and is Interim Artistic Director of the Ensemble Laude treble choir.
Raised in Victoria, Kathryn trained at Oxford (DPhil in music aesthetics), the Guildhall School of Music (PGDip Early Music Singing Performance) and the University of Toronto (BA in Music & German). As a singer, she trained in Oxford (Rhiannon James), New York (Cornelius Reid), and London (Susan McCulloch and Dame Emma Kirkby). Artist in Residence at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama (Walton Fellow), King’s College, London (Visiting Performance Fellow), and Wolfson College, Oxford (Creative Arts Fellow), she has performed across Canada, the UK, and Europe.
Experience as a chorister and soloist includes concerts with Budapest Chamber Opera under Pál Németh, the Monteverdi Choir & English Baroque Soloists under Sir John Eliot Gardiner, the Munich Bach Choir under Hans-Joerg Albrecht, the Whitstable Choral Society under David Flood, plus 10 years of weekly singing in Oxford Chapel Choirs. Locally, Kathryn has sung with the Sooke Philharmonic, Victoria Choral Society, Victoria Philharmonic Choir, Palm Court Orchestra, and Victoria Baroque as well as many choirs around the city.
As a choral clinician for the BC Choral Federation, she has worked with dozens of amateur and semi-professional choirs across the province. She has prepared symphonic choruses for Daniel Taylor, Laurence Cummings, Steven Devine, and Howard Dyck. A champion of new music, Kathryn has performed more than 50 world premieres, the majority of pieces written for her voice. Commissions she has instigated include works now published internationally, including with Cypress Choral Music and Novello. Prior to moving over to performance work, Kathryn was a college lecturer in music history & aesthetics at Oxford University for 12 years, with concurrent appointments at Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Above all, Kathryn loves working with amateur singers, whether as a conductor, a maker of musical projects, or as a voice coach in her private studio.
Yousef Shadian – Accompanist
Music has been a part of Yousef’s life ever since starting piano lessons at age 12. Despite studying and completing a bachelor’s degree of Civil Engineering in 2020, he started accompanying other musicians on the piano professionally in 2018, which started his career as a musician.
From gaining experience in accompanying, he started to branch out his music work, such as working with different local ensembles, including Victoria Philharmonic Choir and Raven Baroque, arranging music to different instrument groups, composing, and teaching piano at Taber Music School. In addition to his local work on the island, he is also interested making educational videos about music on YouTube, covering topics of musicology and deep diving into analyzing music works.