Walter Pitman – författare

Music Makers examines and celebrates the extraordinary lives of composer Harry Freedman and his partner, soloist Mary Morrison.

Harry, with roots in jazz and popular music, was a member of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for 25 years. Canada’s Composer of the Year in 1979, he has written an enormous repertoire that celebrates Canada and is sung and played around the world.

After a stellar career in Canada as a popular singer and opera diva, Mary became an esteemed exponent of Canadian vocal works. She was a prestigious mentor and teacher of young Canadians now appearing on famous opera stages worldwide. She received the League of Composers’ Music Citation in 1968 and won Canada’s major award as Opera Educator in 2002.

Canadian composer Louis Applebaum devoted his life to the cultural awakening of his native land, and this "magnificent obsession" drove him to become a founder of the Canadian League of Composers and the Canadian Music Centre. He was an instrumental figure in the early development of the National Film Board, the Stratford Festival, and the National Art Centre in Ottawa. For nearly half a century he composed music for the Stratford Festival, television, radio, and films. This illustrated biography explores the man who was beloved by his fellow artists and the icon to whom every Canadian, knowingly or not, is indebted.

In a career that spanned five decades, Elmer Iseler proved himself pivotal to the development of choral music in Canada. After founding Canada’s first professional choir in 1954, he became artistic director and conductor of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. In 1979 he established Canada’s leading chamber choir, the Elmer Iseler Singers. He also enjoyed a long association with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, conducting more than 150 performances of Handel’s Messiah and premiering complex twentieth-century music.

Under his baton, choirs achieved international stature for technical brilliance and artistic versatility. He has, in the estimation of many, created a vibrant, world-class choral infrastructure in Canada.

The most decorated musician in Canada, honoured with many awards nationally and internationally, Iseler has made an impact that will continue undiminished through his many recordings, the Elmer Iseler Singers, the Elmer Iseler Chair in Conducting, and the Elmer Iseler National Graduate Fellowships in Choral Conducting at the University of Toronto.