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I have performed as a keyboardist and soloist with numerous orchestras and have been broadcast on CBC Radio 2, National Public Radio (U.S.A.) and Rondo Classic (Finland). My performance history includes performances with the Canadian Chamber Ensemble, Contact Contemporary Music, and the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. As a solo recitalist, I have been featured during the Canadian Opera Company’s Piano Virtuoso concert series, Arts and Letters Series, the Canadian Music Centre and at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario. My interest in contemporary music has led me to work with many composers, including George Crumb, Jack Behrens, Linda Catlin Smith and WL Altman. Live performances by me of Canadian piano repertoire can be found online at the Canadian Music Centre.
As duo pianist with Joseph Ferretti, I have performed across Canada and the United States. Performances as a duo team include the Banff Centre, the Royal Conservatory of Music, Blue Lake Fine Arts Festival and more recently as concerto soloists on the NUMUS Series. We have premiered many works, recorded for Capstone Records and in 2006, held an artist residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts.
Along with Stephanie Chua, Joseph and I have co-founded junctQín, a keyboard collective devoted to performing new music. Our group has commissioned and collaborated with many composers with the assistance of numerous foundations and grants and were recently featured in a weeklong broadcast in Finland, Armenia, Hungary and Kyrgyzstan.
I was coach and repetiteur for the Opera Theatre of Lucca (Italy) and from 2005-2008, collaborative pianist/instructor for the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Arts (U.S.A.). In addition to performing, I am active nationally as an adjudicator and Senior Examiner for the Royal Conservatory of Music. In 2013, I served as keyboard faculty at the National Youth Orchestra of Canada.
I have been teaching at Wilfrid Laurier University since 2003.
Personal website: www.elainelau.ca.
I have an interest in the contemporary repertoire for toy, solo and duo piano, and am active in the premiering of new works for these mediums. I have also contributed as a syllabus reviewer for the Alliance for Canadian New Music Projects. Since its inception, my group junctQín has commissioned and premiered over 30 new works from emerging to internationally established living composers. My interest in developing self-regulated learning has also led me to serve as a teacher advisor from 2011-2018 for the Music Tool Suite Project, a multi-institutional web-based learning tool project (Royal Conservatory, Queen’s University and Concordia University).
- Recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, FACTOR, and the Ernst von Seimens Foundation
- ORMTA Contribution to Teaching Award, 2018
Many of my students have participated in summer music festivals/programs in Canada and the U.S.A. on scholarship, as well as exchange programs in Europe and inter-university pedagogy projects. Students have performed as concerto soloists, won prizes in competitions/festivals and have been accepted on scholarship to graduate programs in North America. Graduates have also gone on to receive fellowships in performance/chamber music and many are establishing successful careers as performers, composers and teachers.
- “Musical Skills: Hear, See, Do,”Music Matters, March/April, 2010.
- “Using Recordings to Enhance the Study of Repertoire,” The Canadian Music Teacher, 2015.
- Compiler and Co-editing team, “Celebration Series” for Piano, Frederick Harris Music Company, 2015.
- Compiler and Co-editing team, "Celebration Series" for Piano, RCM Publishing, 2022.
- Microlocking - with junctQín keyboard collective, music by Saman Shahi (people | places | records, 2021)
- A Present From a Small Distant World - with Kristin Mueller-Heaslip, soprano, music by Alex Eddington (Redshift Records, 2021)
- reTHINK - with junctQín keyboard collective, music for one piano six hands (Redshift Records, 2020)
- “…amid the cannon’s roar,” Music by Jason Doell, 2018
- “Soliloquies” (Capstone Records), Duo piano recording: SCI No. 24 [CPS 8812] (http://www.societyofcomposers.org/publications/cdseries.html)
- Solo recitals: Along the Waves: The 21st Century Virtuoso (On the 13th! Piano Series, Canadian Music Centre), Piano Virtuoso Series (Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre of the Canadian Opera Company), McMichael Art Collection Sunday Concert Series, McMaster University.
- Piano Duo performances: Highnotes Gala Fundraiser, Flato Markham Theatre; NUMUS Series: “Contemporary Concertos” concert; Banff Centre Concert Night Out.
- junctQín performances: RETHINK KEYBOARD: junctQín (Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound, (Kitchener, ON), Triologues (On the 13th! Piano Series, Canadian Music Centre), Instrumental Redo (Sound Travels Festival/Toronto International Electroacoustic Symposium, NAISA).
My teaching focuses on fostering a solid understanding of stylistic aesthetics in balance with encouraging individual creative expression at the instrument. I support a holistic technical and musical approach, as well as independent learning skills that would allow students to take ownership of their own development as musicians. I also believe in establishing the well-rounded and informed musician by cultivating a strong foundation in the standard canon, combined with exploration of more current repertoire to help students grow artistically.