You have now entered the official hub for all things music at UTSC!
Here you will find our most recent events, news, and recorded media of any music-related happenings on campus. We are a student run club aimed at promoting the works, and building the relationships between students with a passion for music performance. As the voices for the music community on campus, our ultimate goal is to liven and document the music scene and its accessibility at UTSC~
Our club constitution for your information:
President
Isaac is an incoming 3rd year majoring in Music and Public Policy. As president, he supports and oversees Music 303's club operations, and he would like to thank his executive, faculty, staff, and (last but not least!) UTSC musicians for supporting this great community.
Vice President Events
Co-Vice President Marketing
Co-Vice President Marketing
Creative Coordinator
Creative Coordinator
Marketing Associate
Website Coordinator/Media
Photographer /Videographer
Photographer /Videographer
First Year Rep Marketing
Beloved Mascot
meow :3 🎷🐈
Events Coordinator
Events Coordinator
First Year Rep Events
Secretary
Treasurer
Outreach Coordinator
Pri (she/her) is a 5th year student pursuing a major in Psychology, as well as minors in Music and Biomedical Ethics. She became passionate about music after finding a space for identity exploration and community via this art form.
Outreach Associate
Associate Professor, Program Director, Music
Mark V. Campbell is a DJ, scholar and curator. His research explores the relationships between Afrosonic innovations and notions of the human. Dr. Campbell is currently the Principal Investigator in the SSHRC funded research project, Hip Hop Archives: The Poetics and Potentials of Knowledge Production. His recent books include the monograph AfroSonic Life (2022), the co-edited collection of essays, We Still Here: Hip Hop in North of the 49th Parallel published (in 2020) and his forthcoming co-edited collection Hip Hop Archives: The Politics and Poetics of Knowledge Production with Murray Forman is due out in 2023. Mark is Assistant Professor of Music and Culture at the University of Toronto Scarborough and holds Research Fellow positions with the Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence and the Research Centre for Music, Sound and Society in Canada.
Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream
Educator and conductor, Dr. Tony Nam-Hai Leong completed his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto. An advocate for well-being and social change through accessible and lifelong music-making, community engagement is central to his work. Dr. Leong serves as MusicFest Canada’s Chairman of the Orchestra/Strings Division; Executive Member of the Canadian Music Educators’ Association; Past-President and member of the Ontario Music Educators’ Association Board of Directors; co-founding director of the Ontario Strings Association; Conn-Selmer Educational Clinician; and past Board Member of the Coalition for Music Education in Canada. With a passion for public and post-secondary education, Dr. Leong is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream at the University of Toronto Scarborough; an instructor at Queen’s University; and Head of the Arts Department at Sir Oliver Mowat Collegiate Institute. His research includes the intersections of string music education, technology, adolescents, community music, and Music for Life.
Professor
Roger Mantie's teaching and scholarship, informed by his fourteen years as a school music educator in Manitoba, emphasizes connections between schooling and society, with a focus on lifelong engagement in and with music and the arts. He is on the editorial boards of Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education, International Journal of Community Music, Journal of Popular Music Education, and the Canadian Music Educator, and is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Music Making and Leisure (2016) and the Oxford Handbook of Technology and Music Education (2017). For more, visit rogermantie.com.
Assistant Professor
Laura Risk is Assistant Professor of Music and Culture in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at the University of Toronto Scarborough, with a graduate cross-appointment at the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto. Her research proactively builds out public archives in order to amplify unheard voices and critically interrogates the notion of tradition, with a focus on traditional music historiography in Quebec. She has published in the Journal of the Society for American Music, Ethnomusicology, MUSICultures, and Critical Studies in Improvisation, as well as The Globe and Mail, The National Post, and Strings Magazine. Dr. Risk is the recipient of the 2014 Prix Mnémo for her co-production of the CD Douglastown: Music and Song from the Gaspé Coast. She is also a fiddler and in 2024 her album Traverse was awarded Quebec’s prestigious Prix Opus for Album of the Year in the category Traditional Québécois Music. www.laurarisk.com
Associate Professor
Dr. Alan Stanbridge is an Associate Professor in the Music and Culture program in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at the University of Toronto Scarborough, and in the Master of Museum Studies (MMSt) program in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. His undergraduate courses include Critical Issues in Music and Society, Exploring Music in Social and Cultural Contexts, and Jazz Roots and Routes, and he offers graduate Museum Studies courses in Contemporary Theories of Art and Culture and Issues in Cultural Policy and Contemporary Culture. Stanbridge is the recipient of a Faculty Teaching Award for his contribution to undergraduate teaching.
Stanbridge has published numerous journal articles and book chapters in the fields of popular music, jazz history, cultural policy, museum studies, and cultural theory, and his new book, Rhythm Changes: Jazz, Culture, Discourse, will be published by Routledge in 2022. He is a contributor to the Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, writing the main entries on Jazz and Postmodernism, with the main entry on the Hollywood Musical forthcoming in a future volume. Stanbridge has been a member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Cultural Policysince 2002, and a member of the Advisory Board of Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études critiques en improvisationsince 2003. He served on the Editorial Board of the Jazz Research Journal from 2004 to 2021, and he was a National Board Member of the Canadian Music Centre (CMC) from 2014 to 2019. Stanbridge has presented papers at conferences in Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, Spain, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Scotland, England, the United States, and Canada.
Associate Professor
Kotoka Suzuki is a Japanese-born composer and sound artist. Her work frequently investigates the relationship between visual elements and sound, often crossing into theater. Her compositions reflect on life, breath and nature, proposing sound as a physical form manipulated through the sculptural practice of composition. Inspired by the synthesis of technology and music, her work is written for a wide range of mediums, including acoustic instruments, electronics, video, dance, and multimedia, such as spatially interactive audio-visual work for both concert and installation settings. They are at times produced in collaboration with artists and scholars from other disciplines.
Suzuki’s work has been featured internationally by performers such as Arditti String Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, Pacifica Quartet, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Continuum, and Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra (Germany). Her work has been presented at numerous venues and broadcasters such as Deutschland Radio, BBC Radio3, Ultraschall (Germany), ISCM World Music Days, The Stone, ZKM Media Museum (Germany), and Music at the Anthology (MATA).
She has taught at the University of Chicago and Arizona State University and is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough with a graduate appointment in the Faculty of Music on the St. George campus. Her work is published by Edition RZ, EMF Media, IMEB records and Signpost Music. She has been an associate composer at the Canadian Music Centre since 2001.
Assistant Professor
Aaron Tsang is a Canadian composer and producer who has provided original music, sound design and post-production audio to over a hundred titles and releases across videogames, commercials, television shows, films, and performance arts productions. In his most recent work, Bravo Niagara!’s full-length multimedia ballet “Kimiko’s Pearl”, he served as sound designer and recording engineer working closely with Meyer Sound Labs, whose live immersive audio setups are employed around the world with clients such as Cirque Du Soleil, Ed Sheeran and Metallica. Using Meyer's SpacemapGO system, a 60-channel immersive audio experience of composer Kevin Lau’s sweeping and powerful ballet score was mounted and is the first live ballet performance of its kind to feature a cinematic immersive audio soundtrack. As a recording, mixing and mastering engineer, his work for Christos Hatzis’ and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s “Going Home Star – Truth and Reconciliation” won a Juno award for “Classical Album of the Year” in 2017. Using a cinematic soundtrack approach to producing classical recordings, Aaron has become increasingly sought after as the producer and recording engineer of new music. His other recent collaborations include recording and mixing Matthias McIntire and Rachel Fenlon’s song cycle “Sing Nature”; producing, recording, and mixing Sarah Slean and Christos Hatzis’ orchestral song “Nothing But The Light”.
In 2021 the University of Toronto commissioned Aaron to compose an orchestral overture for the inauguration of their new campaign “Defy Gravity”. The premiere was performed by the UTSO and conducted by Lorenzo Guggenheim, marking an exact decade since Aaron was first commissioned by the University of Toronto for the previous campaign “Boundless” in 2011, where he was commissioned to compose a brass fanfare anthem for a 30-piece brass band which was performed at every faculty and campus during its launch. During the covid pandemic, Aaron was again commissioned by the University of Toronto to compose an orchestral score for six consecutive virtual convocations held in absentia and streamed online between 2020-2022. This music is still played yearly during the now in-person convocations at the University of Toronto.
Associate Professor, Teaching Stream
Lynn Tucker is the Associate Dean Experiential & Global Learning and is responsible for the prioritization of expanded experiential learning opportunities at U of T Scarborough including enhanced student mobility, local and global partnerships integrated in the curriculum, and coordination and oversight of the Experiential Learning Fund in support of academic departments as they continue to strengthen and grow experiential learning offerings.
Lynn is an Associate Professor, Teaching Stream in Music and Culture. She has proudly conducted the UTSC Concert Band since 2004 and teaches additional courses in community music, musicianship, and small ensembles. Lynn’s research interests include learner-centered pedagogy, instrumental pedagogy, facilitation, community music, avocational music-making, and leadership. Engaging students in lifelong music-making, regardless of career path, is at the forefront of her work and was recognized with the Canadian Music Educators’ Association 2015 Excellence in Leadership Award.
In 2022, Lynn co-founded SoundLife Scarborough, a vibrant research centre for music and community engagement at UTSC. Project priorities include those that foster healthy communities through participatory music-making; support community partnerships and community engaged-research excellence grounded in the principle of reciprocity; and, inspire participants in developing creative, flexible, and participatory approaches to music-making as a lifelong practice. She currently serves as Co-Director with colleague, Laura Risk.
Sessional Lecturer
Adrian Berry is a musician, digital media artist, educator and creative researcher whose practice is a synergistic creature born from almost a decade as a composer, saxophonist and vocalist in American punk bands. Nurtured by intuitive investigations into audiovisual technology, collaborative music making, and live performance, Adrian's new multimedia project Gold Cove explores themes of desire, trauma, and the unheroic reality of resilience through an extra-disciplinary lens. Adrian's work has been featured by The New Yorker and Rolling Stone and recently through their 2022 solo exhibition as artist-in-residence at Video Pool Media Arts Centre and 2023 SIM Artist Residency in Reykjavík, Iceland.
Sessional Lecturer
Canadian conductor and composer Patrick Murray is a multi-faceted choral artist whose musical work reveals an equal commitment to high-calibre performance, education, and community engagement. Currently, as Director of Music at Church of St. John the Evangelist (Anglican) in Elora, ON, Murray directs Canada’s pre-eminent professional Anglican church choir and oversees a comprehensive program of music performance, education, and outreach. Additionally, Murray serves as Artistic Director of Chor Amica (London, ON) and as Director of the University of Toronto Scarborough Concert Choir.
Passionate about working with singers of all ages and abilities, Murray has served on choral faculty at Western University (2018-2021) and Wilfrid Laurier University (2021-2023), and as a teaching artist with the Bach Children’s Chorus (Scarborough, ON), Oakville Choir for Children and Youth, Toronto Children’s Chorus, Canadian Renaissance Music Summer School, and Illinois Summer Youth Music. An advocate for new music, Murray has premiered over thirty new works from the podium in collaboration with ensembles and festivals including the Ad Astra Music Festival (Russell, KS), Guelph Chamber Choir, Illinois Modern Ensemble, New Music New Haven, and FAWN Chamber Creative. Choirs under his direction have been recognized in the National Competition for Canadian Amateur Choirs and been invited to perform at PODIUM, Canada’s national choral conference.
Sessional Lecturer
Dinitha Vithanage is a Sri Lankan-born filmmaker, film composer, and musician based in Toronto. He holds an undergraduate degree in Human Biology & Music and Culture from the University of Toronto Scarborough, where he was honored with the Abram Krashinsky Prize in Music for Best Original Composition in his final year.
Dinitha has since built a diverse portfolio, composing music for narrative and documentary feature films as well as commercials for notable brands including New Balance. He is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Music Technology and Digital Media at the University of Toronto.
As an independent filmmaker, Dinitha’s work spans narrative films and music videos. His recent short film, For a Coffin Full of Gold, won awards for Best Director and Best Drama at the 20th University of Toronto Film Festival. His debut feature film, Midnight Boulevard, is actively participating in film festivals. Dinitha is dedicated to advancing his expertise in genre filmmaking and visual media composition. He seeks to collaborate with artists who share his passion for storytelling and creative innovation.
Sessional Lecturer
Taylor Kurta is an award-winning singer/songwriter, music therapist, and PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo in Aging, Health and Well-being. In 2013 Taylor received the honour as the inaugural winner of the Canada’s Walk of Fame/RBC Emerging Artist Music Mentorship Program. From there, Taylor attended Wilfrid Laurier University where she obtained a bachelor’s in music therapy as the first non-classically trained musician admitted into the program. She then attended the University of Toronto for a master’s in music and health science. As an accredited music therapist since 2019, Taylor’s work has focused on using music as a way to support older adults in creative self-expression and social justice initiatives. Her doctoral research uses collaborative songwriting with people living with dementia as a tool to challenge stigma associated with dementia