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The Canadian conductor, Mark Vuorinen, was bornthe youngest of three in to a Finnish Lutheran minister and a Saskatchewan-born mother. He obtained his Bachelor of Music degree from Wilfrid Laurier University (1998); his Master of Music degree in Conducting from Yale University School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music (2005-2007); and his Doctor of Musical Arts from University of Toronto (2007-2014).
Mark Vuorinen was Music Director of the Toronto Chamber Choir (July 2008-June 2013), a leading early-music ensemble and has given first performances and Canadian premieres of works by many composers, including John Burge, Timothy Corlis, Robinson McClellan, Tawnie Olson and Jonathon Dove and James Whitbourn. He was also George Black Fellow in Sacred Music at Church of the Redeemer in Toronto, including the Bach Cantata Series Church of the Redeemer: Bach Vespers (September 2008-June 2013). Since 2010, he is Artistic Director of the Kitchener-Waterloo's Grand Philharmonic Choir, a symphonic chorus whose repertoire includes the great masterpieces for chorus and orchestra. Since June 2014, he is also Assistant Professor of Music at Conrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo, where he teaches courses in conducting and conducts the University of Waterloo Chamber Choir. He is President-elect of Choirs Ontario.
Mark Vuorinen has given first performances and Canadian premieres of works by many composers, including John Burge, Timothy Corlis, Robinson McLellan, and Tawnie Olsen. He has performed as part of concert series at Toronto’s Music Gallery, the Stratford Summer Music Festival, and the Luminato Festival and has given an all-night performance of Joby Talbot’s moving Path of Miracles, as part of Toronto’s Nuit Blanche Arts Festival. Other recent concert highlights include performances of L.v. Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, Arvo Pärt's Credo and Passio, John Estacio’s The Houses Stand not Far Apart (co-commissioned by the choir) and Richard Einhorn’s moving soundtrack, Voices of Light, as an accompaniment to the silent film, The Passion of Joan of Arc.
A recipient of many awards, Mark Vuorinen was named the E. Stanley Sedar Scholar at Yale University and is a recipient of the Elmer Iseler National Graduate Fellowship in Choral Conducting from the University of Toronto. Mark is a past recipient of the Women’s Musical Club of Toronto Centennial Foundation Graduate Fellowship. He received the David and Marcia Beach Summer Study Award from the University of Toronto for studies in Germany with leading Bach scholar and conductor Helmuth Rilling. In 2016, Mark received the Leslie Bell Prize for Choral Conducting from the Ontario Arts Council and a National Choral Award (Outstanding Dissertation) from Choral Canada.
Mark Vuorinen's research interests include the study of contemporary choral literature from the Baltic states, and in particular, the music of Arvo Pärt and Veljo Tormis. He was an invited lecturer at the Arvo Pärt Project’s Sounding the Sacred conference in New York City in May 2017. He is published in Circuit Musiques Contemporaines and the Research Memorandum Series of Chorus America.
Mark is a frequent guest conductor, choral adjudicator and clinician. Hew is married to Natasha Campbell and currently lives in Kitchener, Ontario. |
