Elise Bradley • Artistic Director, Toronto Children's Chorus
Elise Bradley, now in her ninth season as Artistic Director of the Toronto Children’s Chorus in Toronto, Canada, is an award winning and internationally respected conductor, adjudicator and clinician. A recipient of New Zealand’s Regional and National Excellence in Teaching Awards for Secondary Teaching, Ms. Bradley has dedicated her career to the education of children and the art of choral music. Her long tenure at Westlake Girls’ High School in Auckland brought international honours to her Key Cygnetures choir, including the City of Vienna prize at the Internationales Jugendmusikfest and the Award of the City of Vienna at the Summa Cum Laude International Youth Music Festival. Ms. Bradley also served for many years as Director of the New Zealand Secondary Students’ Choir, which won awards at the International Kathaumixw in Powell River, Canada, was named Champion of the Youth Choir section at the World Choral Games in Xiamen, China, and also won the World Choir Award at the Hong Kong International Youth and Children’s Choirs Competition. Since moving to Canada in 2007, Ms. Bradley has received many invitations to work with choirs and to present at conferences around the world, most recently in Australia, Colombia, the United States, Korea, China and in a number of cities across Canada. During this season, she will have been a guest clinician at the IFCM 1st Asia Pacific World Choral Expo in Macau, with the Grande Prairie Boys’ Choir in Alberta, and at the University of Montana in Missoula. Under Ms. Bradley’s direction, the Toronto Children’s Chorus Chamber Choir has taken three national tours - to perform at Choral Canada’s national ‘Podium’ conferences in Ottawa (2012) and Halifax (2014), and with Soundstreams and the Fujii Percussion Ensemble in Montreal and Ottawa (2013). She has also led the choristers on five international tours - to Austria, the Czech Republic and Germany (2009), Brazil and Argentina (2011), Sweden (2012), South Africa (2013), and Russia, the Baltics and Poland (2015). In March 2016, the choir looks forward to performing in Boston with the Boston City Singers and Coro Allegro, and in the Choirs of America Festival at Carnegie Hall, New York City; in August, the choristers will participate in the 8th America Cantat in Nassau, Bahamas. Ms. Bradley has collaborated in performance with such prominent figures as Krzysztof Penderecki, Christopher Plummer, Gordon Pinsent, Charles Dutoit, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Peter Oundjian, Sir David Willcocks and Sir Andrew Davis. Her first CD with the Chorus, Sounzscapes: From Our Lands - a juxtaposition of contemporary and First Nations music from Canada and New Zealand - was recently named ‘Outstanding Choral Recording’ by Choral Canada. During the choir’s 2015-2016 season, Music of the Spheres, Ms. Bradley and the Toronto Children’s Chorus are honoured to perform with a galaxy of renowned Canadian guest artists, including NEXUS percussion ensemble, baritones James Westman and Russell Braun, and mezzo-soprano and TCC Alumna Krisztina Szabó.
