Canadian conductor, Mark Vuorinen, is Music Director of the Toronto Chamber Choir, a leading early music choral ensemble. Under his direction the choir continues to provide
Toronto audiences with informed performances of seldom heard Renaissance and
Baroque Masterworks.
Mark holds a Master of Music degree from Yale University’s School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music where he received full scholarship. He is currently a candidate for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Toronto where, during his residency, he has regularly conducted the University of Toronto MacMillan Singers and Bach Festival Singers in performances.
Mark has been named Artistic Director and Conductor of Kitchener-Waterloo’s Grand Philharmonic Choir and will begin conducting performances in the 2010-2011 concert season.
An active church musician, Mark has served parishes in Southern Ontario and Connecticut and is currently the George Black Fellow in Sacred Music at the Church of the Redeemer, Toronto. In this capacity, he directs a successful Bach Cantata Series that attracts an enthusiastic audience.
Mark is Founding Artistic Director of the Toronto Choral Artists, a new semi-professional ensemble that debuted in early 2009. The mandate of this organization is to champion new works, particularly those of young and emerging Canadian composers. Performances in 2009-2010 included a collaboration with the Toronto Bach Consort and the world premiere of American composer Robinson McClellan’s This Ravelled Dust: Cantata for the Nuclear Age at Toronto’s Music Gallery.
A recipient of many awards, Mark was named the E. Stanley Sedar Scholar at Yale University in 2006 and is a past recipient of the Elmer Iseler National Graduate Fellowship in Choral Conducting. Currently, Mark is the recipient of the Women’s Musical Club of Toronto Centennial Foundation Graduate Fellowship. In the summer of 2008 Mark received the David and Marcia Beach Summer Study Award from the University of Toronto for studies in Germany with leading Bach scholar and conductor Helmuth Rilling. Mark has twice been a finalist in the prestigious Leslie Bell Competition for Choral Conducting, winning an honourable mention in 2000.
Mark’s research interests include the study of contemporary choral literature from the Baltic states, and in particular, the music of Arvo Pärt and Veljo Tormis. In 2006, Mark was invited by the American Choral Director’s Association to present a workshop on this topic to the Connecticut Fall conference in Hartford, CT. Mark was an invited lecturer at Boston University’s Arvo Pärt and Contemporary Spirituality Conference in March 2010, marking the composer’s 75th birthday.
It was an evening of well-chosen repertoire performed with technical assurance and secure musical judgment.
— The Globe and Mail