About the choir

Enlivening Toronto’s arts community for 49 years, the award-winning Amadeus Choir is a semi-professional choir of auditioned voices from all parts of the GTA and surrounding areas. The Choir champions the best of choral music and premieres works of Canadian and international composers through a self-produced Toronto concert series, guest performances, and special events. Known well beyond Toronto through tours, festivals, recordings, and national and international radio broadcasts, the Choir collaborates with many professional performing arts organizations in the GTA. 

The Amadeus Choir is proud to take a leading role in educating the next generation of choral musicians by providing workshops for conductors, composers, and students. The Choir is known for its strong support of Canadian music, and regularly commissions work from established and emerging Canadian composers.

Throughout its history, the Amadeus Choir has received numerous awards, most recently the Association of Canadian Choral Communities' award for Most Innovative Performance in 2014 for “Music of the Spheres,” a multi-media collaboration with the Elmer Iseler Singers, the Ontario Science Centre, and the Roberta Bondar Foundation. 

In 2019, after celebrating the 35-year leadership of Lydia Adams, the Choir welcomed Kathleen Allan as Artistic Director and Conductor.

Our Team

Kathleen Allan

Artistic Director and conductor

Kathleen Allan is the Artistic Director and Conductor of the Amadeus Choir of Greater Toronto, Artistic Director of Canzona, Winnipeg’s professional Baroque choir, and Visiting Professor of Choral Music at Western University. Originally from St. John’s, NL, Ms. Allan is in high demand as a conductor, composer, and clinician and is equally comfortable working in early, contemporary, and symphonic repertoire. Until 2019, Ms. Allan served as the Director of Choral Studies and Associate Conductor of the Symphony Orchestra at the Vancouver Academy of Music and was the Associate Conductor of the Vancouver Bach Choir. She was the 2016 recipient of the Sir Ernest MacMillan Prize in Choral Conducting. In 2015, Ms. Allan made her Asian debut conducting Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio in Japan. She is also a founding co-Artistic Director of Arkora, an electric vocal chamber consort dedicated to blurring lines between the music of our time and masterworks from the ancient repertoire.  

Her compositions have been commissioned, performed, and recorded by ensembles throughout the Americas and Europe and have been featured at two World Symposiums on Choral Music. Her collaboration with Labrador youth choir Ullugiagâtsuk was featured at the National Arts Centre celebrations for Canada 150 on July 1, 2017. Ms. Allan is published by Boosey and Hawkes, Cypress Choral Music, and is a MusicSpoke composer. Also an accomplished soprano, she has appeared as a soloist with the National Broadcast Orchestra, Berkshire Choral Festival, and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. In addition to freelancing regularly in Canada and the US, she has performed with the Vancouver Chamber Choir, Early Music Vancouver, the Arnold Schoenberg Chor (Vienna), Skylark Vocal Ensemble (Atlanta), and the Yale Schola Cantorum. She holds a bachelor’s degree in composition from the University of British Columbia and a master’s degree in conducting from Yale University.

Nila Rajagopal

Associate conductor

An experienced conductor and educator, Nila Rajagopal is passionate about bringing people together through music. She is delighted to join the Amadeus Choir’s artistic team as Associate Conductor! Nila’s collaborative spirit has granted her various positions within the choral world. Highly sought after for her choral expertise, she was recently appointed Conductor of Training Choir II for the Toronto Children’s Chorus and spends the summer months working with the Mississauga Summer Chorale as Associate Conductor. She has previously held positions with the St. Lawrence Choir in Montreal and the Oakville Choir for Children and Youth. Increasingly recognized for her promising musical excellence, Nila was the recipient of the 2016 Doreen Rao Choral Award, the 2019 Iwan Edwards Award, the 2019 Ken Fleet Choral Conducting Scholarship and most recently, the 2020 Helen Hall Prize.

A passionate lifelong learner, Nila holds a Master of Music degree in Choral Conducting from McGill University, where she studied under the tutelage of Dr. Jean-Sébastien Vallée. She previously earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Toronto, where she studied voice with internationally renowned soprano Nathalie Paulin, and choral conducting with Dr. Hilary Apfelstadt, Dr. Lori-Anne Dolloff and Zimfira Poloz. Committed to the future of choral music in Canada, Nila is also Office Coordinator at Choral Canada, Canada’s National Arts Service Organization for choral music.

Joy Lee

Collaborative Pianist

Canadian pianist Joy Lee enjoys a multi-faceted career as a collaborator, teacher, soloist, adjudicator, and scholar. She is a passionate advocate of music and has performed at events and venues ranging from the Canadian Embassy in Washington D.C. (with Nathaniel Dett Chorale as part of the celebration of the Inauguration of US President Barack Obama, 2009) to the Banff Centre for the Arts, to performance spaces in Inuvik and Yellowknife in Canada’s Northwest Territories.

A student of celebrated pedagogue Marietta Orlov, Joy has a strong background in solo piano (BMus and MMus from the University of Toronto), having worked with some of the leading pianists currently active. But Joy’s love of the voice and its beautiful literature led her to the role of collaborative pianist, and the completion of a Masters in collaborative piano and chamber music (on full scholarship) at the University of Michigan, where she studied with one of North America’s pre-eminent collaborative pianists, Martin Katz. Joy has since worked with many of the leading vocal pianists and coaches, including the late Martin Isepp (Juilliard), Graham Johnson (Royal Academy of Music London), Warren Jones (Manhattan), the late Jessye Norman and Shirley Verrett (Michigan), and others. These wonderful opportunities have leant Joy a manifold existence as a musician; she has experience not only as a solo and collaborative pianist but also as a conductor, a vocal/instrumental coach, and a music director; in these capacities she has been involved in productions as wide-ranging as Rossini’s La Cenerentola and Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus to Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods and Kurt Weil’s Lady in the Dark.

Joy is a lecturer and piano faculty at Tyndale University and is equally dedicated to educating a new generation of musicians. Additionally, she is in high demand as a vocal coach at both the University of Toronto and Tyndale university. She also works and performs with choirs such as MacMillan Singers (University of Toronto), Tyndale Community Choir (Tyndale University) as well as North Toronto Songbirds. Prior to these engagements, Joy collaborated with the Nathaniel Dett Chorale (2006-2014), and held a faculty position at the Albion College in Michigan where she taught piano courses and served as a collaborative pianist and vocal coach. She has also worked and participated in such festivals as the Banff Centre for the Arts, Centre d'Arts Orford, the Pine Mountain Music Festival, Domaine Forget Académie internationale de musique et de danse (2017), RomeSmarts (2018), L’Académie Francis Poulenc (2019) and

University of Toronto’s Choral Conducting Symposium (2022). Joy is a DMA (Doctor of Musical Arts) Candidate in the Collaborative Piano Programme at the University of Toronto under the supervision of the Head of the Collaborative Piano Programme, Professor Steven Philcox.

Soprano Maeve Palmer and Joy Lee, voice-piano duo earned second-prize in the 2017 Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition and, under its auspices, were invited to tour four Canadian cities sharing their passion for contemporary music. Joy is a winner of the prestigious 2018 Gwendolyn Williams Koldofsky Prize.

Amanda Singh

Choir Coordinator

Jennifer Petrilli

Director of Marketing and Communications

Board of Directors

Mary Gray President
Phyllis Doherty Past-President
Cathy Robinson Treasurer
Ilana Lucas Secretary
Frank Samuels Communications and Development

Consultants to the Board

Kathleen Allan Artistic Director and Conductor

Administration

Vivian Lee Business Manager
Amanda Singh Choir Coordinator

Voices of Earth (2015)

Voices of Earth is a celebration of four Canadian choral composers at their splendid best and of their importance in our choral life. It has been a great honour to commission, premiere and perform together on many occasions both Ruth Watson Henderson’s Voices of Earth and Eleanor Daley’s Salutation of the Dawn.

Also on this CD are the much-loved I Will Sing Unto the Lord of Imant Raminsh and Eleanor Daley’s Prayer for Peace. We are proud to present Sid Robinovitch’s Of Heart and Tide, commissioned especially for the Amadeus Choir.

The Amadeus Choir and Bach Children’s Chorus have been privileged to work closely with composers Eleanor Daley and Ruth Watson Henderson through many years and are thrilled that both Eleanor and Ruth play their own works on this CD, creating a wonderful legacy for the choirs and the many listeners who appreciate the works of these two amazing composers.

Lydia Adams, conductor
With Bach Children’s Chorus
Linda Beaupré, conductor

Celtic Celebration (2013)

Featuring stunning arrangements of beautiful melodies and toe-tapping tunes, both familiar and new, from Scotland, Ireland, Wales and the east coast of Canada, written by some of our favourite composers and arrangers. Lydia Adams, conductor

Tokaido – The Choral Music of Harry Freedman (2006)

Featuring the Elmer Iseler Singers, Amadeus Chamber Singers, Aeolian Winds, and Toronto Children’s Chorus performing the choral music of Harry Freedman.

Lydia Adams and Jean Ashworth Bartle, conductors

Centrediscs/Centredisques – Canadian Music Centre, CMCCD 11206

Everlasting Light – Footprints in New Snow (2002)

Featuring the Amadeus Chamber Singers and the Elmer Iseler Singers in performances of two major choral works by Christos Hatzis – Everlasting Light and De Angelis.

Lydia Adams, conductor
Laura Pudwell – mezzo soprano
Daniel Taylor – countertenor
Benjamin Butterfield – tenor
Russell Braun – baritone

CBC Records, MVCD 1156-2

A Christmas Flourish (1997)

Featuring the Amadeus Choir with the Hannaford Street Silver Band.

Lydia Adams and James Curnow, conductors

Ring-a the News (1994)

Featuring winning carols from the Amadeus Carol Writing Competition

Catherine Wyn-Rogers, mezzo-soprano
The Bach Children’s Chorus of Scarborough (Linda Beaupré, conductor)
Eleanor Daley, organ

Lydia Adams, conductor