Robert Hall
Robert Hall completed his undergraduate degree in piano performance at Wilfrid Laurier University before going on to spend several years as a professional chorister with both the Vancouver Chamber Choir and the Tudor Singers of Montreal. He then completed his Master of Music degree in voice performance at the University of Regina before pursuing his doctorate in choral music from the University of Illinois. He has held faculty positions at the University of Regina, the University of Saskatchewan, the State University of New York-Plattsburgh, the University of Guelph, and currently Laurentian University, where he is the Chair of the Department of Music.
As a baritone soloist Hall has in recent years performed such works as Handel’s Messiah, the Orff Carmina Burana, the Fauré Requiem, and Vaughan Williams’ Dona nobis pacem with the Bach-Elgar Choir of Hamilton, the Stratford Concert Choir, and the Algoma Chamber Choir in Sault Ste Marie. In 2004 he completed a tour of Northern Ontario as baritone soloist with the prestigious Penderecki String Quartet and he recently performed with that ensemble again in 2007. In 2005 he was the featured vocalist for the retirement of Justice John C. Major at the Supreme Court of Canada. More recently Hall sang the world premiere of American composer Marshall Onofrio’s Carmina Whitmania at the 2006 convention of Delta Omicron in Bloomington, Illinois.
Also active as a pianist, in 2003 Hall presented his own piano and organ transcription of the Saint-Saëns Carnival of the Animals with organist William O’Meara at a concert in Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall. That fall he created a new presentation of Musorgsky’s piano work Pictures at an Exhibition in which he dressed as Musorgsky and presented the program in character, providing a spoken introduction to each section of the work. In a 2004 collaboration with Laurentian University Coordinator of Film Studies Dr. Hoi Cheu, a multi-media presentation of both Pictures and Carnival premiered in Sudbury and North Bay. Another Musorgsky project saw Dr. Hall and American composer Marshall Onofrio give a collaborative dramatic presentation at the November 2004 Annual Meeting of the College Music Society in San Francisco.
Dr. Hall continues to practice in the field of church music and holds the Associate and Choir Master diplomas from the Royal Canadian College of Organists as well as a Fellowship from the American Guild of Organists. He is currently Cantor at St. Andrew’s United Church in Sudbury. In demand as an adjudicator and clinician, he has adjudicated at festivals from British Columbia to Ontario.
Robert Hall - piano
Piano & OrganWednesday, May 23, 2007
6:00-6:30 p.m
Tickets $5