25-26 Scholarship Recipients
Maxwell Quartet student outreach
The Adaskin Family and the WMCT
Recent events, activities and more!
Singers Sweep Scholarships this Year – and lots of other Good News Read More »
On July 19 at 1 pm, the Toronto Summer Music (TSM) REGeneration concert Transfigured Night: Arensky and Schoenberg featured violinist Yoanna Haeun Jang, a 2025 TSM Academy Fellow partly supported by a Fellowship from the WMCT. Board members Sylvia Sarkus and Annette Sanger were delighted to attend and to meet Yoanna. She played beautifully in the Piano Trio no. 1, written in 1894 by the Russian composer of Romantic-style music, Anton Arensky. At just eighteen years of age, Yoanna demonstrated a superb command of her instrument and a deep musicality that belies her young age. Fortunately, she is a local girl so we may well have other opportunities to build on the connection with the WMCT. Watch for her soon in Festival Concerts on July 26 (Elgar), and 30 (Dvořák).
Photo: Lucky Tang
WMCT 2025 Fellow performs at Toronto Summer Music Read More »
“A long-forgotten violin, a 300-year-old cello: The strange tales behind 5 rare musical instruments on Toronto stages.” by Joshua Chong, Toronto Star
Tiffany Yeung, 2024 WMCT Scholarship Winner, performing on a violin made by the French luthier Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume in 1869.
“From a family knick-knack that turned out to be a valuable French violin, to a rare, five-string baroque cello, these instruments have stories to share.
Every musical instrument has a unique story, each with a distinct personality. Some, centuries old, have been passed down numerous times, from one generation of musicians to the next. Here are the weird and absurd stories behind five instruments that can be heard on stages across Toronto.
For years, this violin sat on Greg Cook’s bookshelf. He had inherited it after his maternal grandfather died. But no one in his family thought it was anything more than a knick-knack.
It wasn’t until the instrument’s neck broke, and Cook brought it in for repairs that he and his family discovered that the family heirloom wasn’t just any old violin; it was one crafted by the prolific French luthier Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume at the peak of his career in 1869.
In 2009, following this discovery, Cook and his wife donated the instrument to the Canada Council for the Arts. It’s currently on a three-year loan to Tiffany Yeung, a student at the Royal Conservatory of Music who won the violin through the council’s Musical Instrument Bank competition. The violin’s two-piece back is made of maple, while its front is crafted of spruce, finished with a reddish-brown varnish. “It’s a very warm, rich and very sweet sound,” described Yeung. “And paired with this (Vuillaume model) bow, the violin is just incredibly smooth.”’
From the article by Joshua Chong, May 12, 2025
Catching up with a Scholarship Winner Read More »
Members gathered in the Arts and Letters Club Great Hall on September 26. After quickly approving the financial statements, appointing auditors for next year, listening to the reports of last year’s activities, accepting the ONCA documents (the result of extreme amounts of time and energy) we enjoyed music made by three of our scholarship winners, and a delectable lunch.
Photo credits: Jim Kippen
2024 Annual Meeting – more fun than most AMs Read More »
For the 2024/25 season soprano Gabrielle Turgeon will become part of the company’s professional development program. As an undergraduate at the U of T Faculty of Music, Gabrielle was the 2021-2022 winner of the WMCT Centennial Scholarship. She is currently a student at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.
As a new member of the Ensemble Studio she will be well on the way to a professional career, like mezzo-soprano Alex Hetherington, a previous winner of the same scholarship and current Ensemble Studio member.
MORE from Ludwigvan Toronto
Another WMCT Scholarship Winner joins COC Ensemble Studio Read More »
Congratulations to Québec violinist Daphné Bourbonnais who has won the competition to join Sinfonia Toronto as a member of the first violins. Daphne currently holds the WMCT Glenn Gould School scholarship, and performed at the 2023 Annual Meeting. See the complete report in Ludwig Van Toronto.
WMCT Scholarship winner appointed to Sinfonia Toronto Read More »
