Friday, 26 April 2019

Speaker: Elaine  Keillor

Lecture title: Canadian Women: Musical pioneers

Lecture Summary

I suspect that you, like most of us who took music lessons, had a woman as a teacher. Teaching music was one of the few professions a woman could follow. Frequently she could pursue teaching in the family home and thus manage to look after children and household duties at the same time. In this presentation, I wish to tell stories of pioneering Canadian women who pursued musical careers as composers, opera singers, instrumental performers, and even conductors. They prepared the ground for the blossoming of female song-writers, composers, and performers after 1950.  Thus, today we are not surprised to see Tania Miller conducting the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra.

Bio: Elaine Keillor

Elaine Keillor, C.M.for over six decades held the record for being the youngest to ever receive the ARCT degree, She went on to pursue a performing career as pianist and collaborative musician throughout Canada and in the United States, Europe, and Asia. After being the first woman to obtain a PhD. in musicology from the University of Toronto, she taught at several universities including Carleton. Her research largely focussed on Canadian music and as a musician, she endeavoured to bring alive particularly the compositions produced by women. For more on her research and performing career, consult www.elainekeillor.ca