2013 Festival Adjudicators 

Dr. Eric Favaro - Choral

Dr. Eric Favaro is a passionate education advocate who has devoted his entire career to helping teachers gain a better understanding of the importance of an education in and through the arts. He is respected nationally and internationally as an innovator for effective programs in Arts Education.

Trained as a music educator, Eric has experience teaching music at the elementary, secondary and post secondary levels.  He spent the latter half of his career as Arts Education Consultant in the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board and later at the Nova Scotia Department of Education.  He has played a key role in music initiatives across Canada and beyond, and has been instrumental in the development and implementation of innovative curriculum.

Eric has served in many capacities on provincial, national and international boards, and has worked for UNESCO on projects and position papers.  He is a Past President of the Canadian Music Educators’ Association, a former director on the board of the International Society for Music Education, and is currently in-coming Chair of the Coalition for Music Education in Canada.

Now retired from public education, Eric operates his consulting firm, Artscape Consulting Inc, and is in demand as a lecturer and workshop facilitator. He was recently appointed a Visiting Fellow to the Ministry of Education in Singapore where he serves in an advisory capacity as they develop their music and arts education programmes in schools.  In January he begins a new focus in his work as he brings his consultancy services to India. 

Jonathan Dagenais - Band

Jonathan Dagenais holds a Masters degree (M.Mus) in Wind Orchestra Conducting from McGill University, supervised by Mr. Alain Cazes, and a Bachelor's degree in Composition from the Université de Montréal.

In addition to band/orchestra conducting and CEGEP/University teaching (music theory, composition, ear training, musicianship and conducting), Mr. Dagenais is pursuing a career as a composer for wind orchestra. His works have been performed repeatedly by many Canadian University ensembles (McGill University, Université de Sherbrooke, University of Toronto), they appear on several professional recordings and some of them are listed in the MusicFest Canada's concert band syllabus since 2009. Mr. Dagenais's works are currently published throughout Canada by GAM Publishing and throughout Europe, America and Asia by the belgium music Publisher Hafabra.

Since 2005, Mr. Dagenais has acted as the conductor and artistic director of the Orchestre à Vents Non Identifié (OVNI), a Montreal wind orchestra he co-­‐founded. This ensemble is dedicated to collaborative and active listening, orchestral tone quality, refined interpretation as well as adopting a humoristic approach. He was guest conductor for the Orchestre Symphonique Pop de Montréal (OSPM) in 2012.

Mr. Dagenais is frequently hired by musical summer camps in Québec (Asbestos, CAMMAC) to conduct orchestras, bands and chamber music groups. He's been guest conductor of some Canadian Honor's Band (PEI, Quebec and Harmonie FAMEQ). He is also regularly asked to adjudicate and/or to give clinics at many Canadian Musical Contests or Festivals (MusicFest, Atlantic Band Festival, Toronto Festival of Music, St. John's Rotary Music Festival, etc.).

For the 2010-­‐2011 academic year, Jonathan has been the McGill University Wind Symphony conductor and artistic director, replacing Mr Alain Cazes. He is now an instructor at McGill for the "Instrumental Conducting" class and a musicianship teacher at "Collège Lionel-­‐Groulx."

More recently, Jonathan has been appointed as the conductor of the National Youth Band of Canada for the 2013 edition in Nova Scoatia and New Brunswick. Mr. Dagenais is also planning doctorate studies staring in 2013.

Jonathan Dagenais's official web site: http://www.jonathandagenais.net

Lynn Johnson - Senior Piano

Lynn Johnson's career as a solo and collaborative performer has taken her across Canada, throughout the United States and Europe.  She has been featured in numerous broadcasts with CBC and Radio Canada, and critics have praised her ability to meet the demands of a vast range of vocal and instrumental repertoire.  In addition, Lynn maintains a very active schedule as teacher, adjudicator and chamber musician.   Together with Edmund Dawe, Lynn has released  a CD featuring an eclectic program of two-piano works.
Johnson earned a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from North Texas State University and a Master of Music in Collaborative Piano at the University of Southern California.  At USC she studied with renowned collaborative pianist, Gwendolyn Koldofsky and harpsichordist, Malcolm Hamilton.  She is also the recipient of the First Prize with Distinction in Collaborative Piano and Chamber Music from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels, Belgium.  She is currently teaching at Mount Allison University. 

Barbara Long, ARCT - Junior Piano

Barbara was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario where she studied piano. She returned to musical studies as a young mom studying in Fredericton, New Brunswick, earning her ARCT Teachers Degree.

Barbara and her husband live on the family farm near Hartland, New Brunswick where she has operated a private piano studio for over 25 years.  Barbara is President of the NB Registered Music Teachers’ Association and a member the Canadian Music Festival Adjudicators’ Association.  She has been the Provincial Administrator of the New Brunswick Federation of Music Festivals since 2002 and has served as a director on the board of the Federation of Canadian Music Festivals. 

Barbara's students have been consistent winners of prizes at the Festival of Musical Arts and the Carleton County Music Festival.  Several have earned scholarships to study music at universities.  Many others are involved in the musical life of their churches and communities.  Barbara continues to mentor other teachers and enjoys adjudicating at festivals. In 2009, the Canadian Music Teachers’ Association honored her with the Hugheen Ferguson Distinguished Teacher Award in recognition of outstanding contribution to music education in Canada.

Nina Scott-Stoddart - Voice

Nina began her career as a mezzo soprano soloist after graduating from York University in 1991. Nina has sung with many orchestras and opera companies, including Tafelmusik, Opera Atelier, Mississauga Choral Society, Pax Christi Chorale, Opera Maine, Toronto Operetta Theatre, Opera in Concert, the Kingston Symphony, the International Chamber Music Festival in New Zealand, Opera Nova Scotia, the Mahone Bay Concert Series, Essential Opera and the NS Gilbert and Sullivan Society. Nina has been recorded on the Naxos label and broadcast coast-to-coast on the CBC.

Nina is the co-founder of Toronto's Opera Anonymous, which produced over 20 well-reviewed works in its eight year history. She also directed opera for a number of groups in Toronto.

Since moving to Lunenburg, Nova Scotia in 2002, Nina has worked as Artistic Producer for ONS’s Opera Valentine for five years, founded Maritime Concert Opera (which has just completed its eighth season) and co-founded the Halifax Summer Opera Workshop. 

For HSOW Nina has directed Mozart's Cosi fan tutte and Don Giovanni, Handel's Giulio Cesare, Menotti's The Consul, Floyd's Susannah, Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann and Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Nina was the guest stage director the Dalhousie University Opera Workshop for four years: including productions of Menotti's The Old Maid and the Thief and The Telephone, Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, Puccini's Gianni Schicchi and Mollicone’s Face on the Barroom Floor. She also directed the musical RENT for DGM Productions in Halifax.

Nina was the guest stage director for Acadia University's Singing Theatre Ensemble in 2012, directing You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

In 2013 Nina looks forward to directing Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors for MCO, Sondheim's A Little Night Music for HSOW and to the launch of her new opera workshop, the Yorkshire Opera Workshop, where she will direct Purcell's Dido and Aeneas.

Shelley Thompson - Musical Theatre - Jazz/Blues

Shelley Thompson is an actor, writer and director living in Dartmouth, NS

Trained in London, England at RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) she worked as a leading player in London's West End, the regions, at the Royal National Theatre, for BBC Radio and Television and numerous independent film and television companies in the U.K. before returning to Canada to settle in Nova Scotia with her husband and daughter, where she is perhaps best known as Barb Lahey from Trailer Park Boys.

Her theatre work in Canada includes seasons at the Atlantic Theatre Festival, the Neptune Theatre, the Globe Theatre Regina, the Prairie Theatre Exchange, Winnipeg, the Shaw Festival and Festival Antigonish.

She occasionally writes an arts column for the Chronicle Herald and has had plays produced by both professional and community groups.  Her poetry has been included in the Literary Journal Towards the Light and Papirmasse,  and her short story Bowls of Cheer was included in the Nimbus Christmas Anthology in 2008, and then broadcast nationally by the CBC as part of her program with the Blue Engine String Quartet, Bowls of Cheer - a series of Christmas Stories with music.

Jeff Torbert - Guitar

Jeff Torbert has taken an improvisatory approach to a music career---from a classical guitar degree and apprenticeships with jazz masters Jerry Granelli and David Tronzo to workshops at the Banff Centre; to performances with Upstream Orchestra, Spontaneous Combustion Ensemble, Libertango, Symphony Nova Scotia, TFC (on CBC's Concerts on Demand), and Rich Aucoin (opening for Black Eyed Peas, Weezer); to his ECMA and Music Nova Scotia-nominated album 'This Weather Honest'; and finally to the creation of Musicians For Farmers, a benefit event raising money and awareness for food sovereignty issues in Nova Scotia. 

He is also a consummate music educator---from a year teaching to junior high students to several years with the Creative Music Workshop at the Halifax Jazz Festival; over a decade of running a private music studio; teaching workshops with fiddler Debbie Miles; as well as adjudicating for provincial and regional music festivals. Jeff is currently a member of the guitar faculty at Dalhousie University and Acadia University.