WILLIAM BROWN

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William Brown’s illustrious conducting and teaching career spans thirty-seven years.  While teaching at Lawrence Park Collegiate he founded the national award-winning Lawrence Park Collegiate FLOREAT Choir.  The choir won four national titles, including the 2016 Best High School Choir and the Grand Prize of Best Choir in the Federation of Canadian Music Festival National Finals.

William holds an honours music and education degree from Western University. For ten years he served as artistic director of the Woodstock Fanshawe Singers. In that time, the choir won first prize in the CBC Choral Competition for Amateur Choirs. For fifteen seasons (1996–2011), William served as artistic director and conductor of the ORIANA Women’s Choir, Toronto. During that time, the choir won provincial and national performance awards, released five compact discs, earned national awards for innovative programming, and commissioned over sixty-five new choral works promoting Canadian composers.
 
William’s numerous awards include the TDSB 2018 Teaching Award Finalist, 2016 Toronto Star Award for Teaching Excellence and first prize in the Ontario Arts Council Leslie Bell Conducting Competition. William has written several well-received choral compositions. Please visit https://williambrown.ca for further information. William is a past president of the ACCC, (now Choral Canada), and Choirs Ontario. William is active across the country as an adjudicator, clinician, and composer.

 

Welcome Yule

by William Brown

CP 2238 – any combination of voices – duration 5:15

This setting of Welcome, Yule by Canadian composer William Brown is an impressive and effective concert opener for your holiday concert.  The piece allows for creative choir positioning in the concert hall for soloists and choir.  Welcome, Yule incorporates a haunting medieval free-chant, the spoken word combined with gong and wind chimes, and concludes with the joyous driving pulse of earthy harmonies and side-drum.  The 15th century anonymous text used welcomes the Christmas season.