Christopher Dawes

CHRISTOPHER DAWES’ musical life and ministry have spanned genres and institutions; ideas and ideals; playing for royalty and serving the homeless; serving and seeking in cathedrals, tiny churches, denominations, and their various worlds. He has given solo organ recitals and accompanied choral tours across North America and Europe, and been broadcast repeatedly on domestic and international radio services. His work appears on over two dozen commercial CDs to date and been showcased in Canada’s greatest concert halls and organ lofts.

Currently, he divides his professional time between freelance performing across a wide spectrum of the Toronto music scene including a special interest in new musical and dramatic works, and also in several musical leadership positions. He is Director of Music to Rosedale Presbyterian Church in Toronto, Music Director of the 18-voice a capella Marion Singers of Greater Toronto, accompanist and coach to graduate and undergraduate choral and orchestral conducting programs of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music, and Acting Artistic Director to his hometown choir, the 90-voice Georgetown Choral Society. He has served as Director of Canada’s Summer Institute of Church Music since its 2005 Session.

Following upon graduate level work in the area of Musical Genre at McMaster University in the mid-2000s he gives papers, lectures and pre-concert chats on topics he finds, and that find him. In 2013 he founded Chroì, a Celtic crossover band that finds its audience in churches, pubs and concert halls across southern Ontario. Originally from near Kingston, Ontario, Chris lives with his wife, Marcia, and their three children in Georgetown, where they are members of the Christian Reformed Church.