Howe Sound Music Festival is pleased to introduce the 2018 Adjudicators:

Piano - Dan Wardrope

Dan Wardrope holds his A.R.C.T. from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Canada and a Licentiate degree from Trinity College in London, England.

Wardrope is an active composer, producer, clinician and instructor. His album of original compositions receives radio airplay across North America including regular play on CBC radio. His students have won many prestigious awards and scholarships and many have continued on to professional teaching careers. Other students have developed successful professional performing careers in music including a major record label signing with Virgin Records, another with EMI Records, a Juno Award, as well as many television and radio performances. His students have won auditions to perform for international concert pianists Janina Fialkowska, Angela Cheng, Stephen Lemelin and Lang Lang. For twenty-one consecutive years, Dan's advanced students have hosted, performed and sold out a benefit concert which has raised support for organizations such as the B.C. Cancer Foundation, World Vision and Free the Children. Wardrope has directed and produced the recording of many commercial projects spanning a wide range of genres including classical, pop, jazz, and choral music. He is also the author of the student handbook "Practicing With Creative Discipline: 100 Practice Ideas For the Pianist".

Dan spends time teaching workshops and adjudicating festivals across Canada as a member of the Canadian Music Federation Adjudicators Association. He is also a member of the Royal Conservatory of Music College of Examiners. Mr. Wardrope teaches a private music studio with an extensive waiting list in Maple Ridge, British Columbia.

Hailed as “un jeune chef très talentueux” by Radio-Canada, Kevin Zakresky is a choral and orchestral conductor living in Vancouver, British Columbia. He is currently a touring conductor for Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses, a production that has seen him direct orchestras in Philadelphia, Montreal, Quebec City, Charlottesville, Columbus, Miami, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Fresno, and London (with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra in Wembley Arena). The 2017 season will see him conduct 20 performances of Zelda including shows in Seattle, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Portland, Birmingham UK, San Diego, Pittsburgh, and Dublin. He will also be guest conducting the Fort Worth Symphony in a performance of rePlay: Symphony of Heroes.

Zakresky is founder-director of Players and Singers in Vancouver, an ensemble that performs dramatic choral, orchestral and operatic works. In its inaugural season, Players and Singers is presenting John Blow’s Venus and Adonis in January 2018 and Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Unicorn, Gorgon and the Manticore in June 2018.

He is past Director of the Pacifica Singers, an ensemble associated with the Vancouver Chamber Choir, and past Music Director of the Prince George Symphony Orchestra in British Columbia. During his time with the PGSO, he worked with many soloists including Jane Coop, Dale Barltrop, Nadina Mackie Jackson and Lucas Wong. He has recently conducted the St Louis Symphony, Sudbury Symphony, West Coast Symphony and two concerts with the Vancouver Chamber Choir.

He has been a faculty member of the Vancouver International Song Institute, directed choirs at Douglas College and taught conducting at the School for Contemporary Arts, Simon Fraser University. He currently teaches at the Vancouver Symphony School of Music. He completed his Doctorate at Yale University in 2012. http://kevinzakresky.ca

Jean-Marie Kent is the Director of Choirs at Roosevelt High School in Seattle. She serves as Department Head and as Leader of her Professional Learning Community for Seattle Public Schools. Jean-Marie is also President of Elliott Bay Music Educators, a local division of the National Association of Music Educators. 

Jean-Marie completed her doctorate in choral conducting from the University of Washington, Seattle. She was a Huckabay Teaching Fellow and received the honor of designing a class for musicians to teach collaboration and community engagement. She was awarded the Celebrating University of Washington Women Award in 2010 for her work in building community within the UW Women's Choir. With the assistance of a Foreign Language Association Fellowship, she studied Vivaldi's original opera choruses in Torino, Italy. She was a Fellow in the Institute on the Public Humanities, which developed a multi-disciplinary cohort.

Before moving to Seattle, Jean-Marie taught music on Vancouver Island and in New York where she developed public school music programs for gifted children. She has conducted orchestras and choirs, including the University of Regina Chamber Singers, UW Women's Choir, Nanaimo Symphony Orchestra, and the Victoria Civic Orchestra. She was a professor at the University of Victoria, Nanaimo College, and University of Regina.

Keeping herself busy, Jean-Marie directs the Magnolia Chorale, a community choir, with outreach that is focused on developing life-long singers. She has studied vocal jazz with Greta Matassa, Rosana Eckert, Dawn Clemen, New York Voices and Greg Jasperse. 

Recognized for her ability to get to the heart of singing, she is frequently sought after as a clinician for high school and community choirs.