Personnel

Lawrence House has had a wide and varied musical career as a professional trumpeter, most notably as a soloist and chamber music player, where he has more than 30 first-performances to his credit. During his extensive career he has been heard in frequent broadcasts for the CBC, CTV, STV and several other networks. He was the founder and director of both the Toronto Brass Quintet and the Saskatchewan Brass.

A solo CD, Festival Music for Trumpet, and a video, Basic Trumpet performance, are currently available. A new CD, " When You and I Were Young, Maggie", is available from Amazon.

He has won numerous awards and scholarships including the J.M.Greene Music Prize, the Julia Silliman Memorial Scholarship, the Aspen Composition Prize, and several Canada Council and Arts Board awards.

He regularly appears as a soloist with orchestras and in concert with his wife, Aurora Dokken, presenting recitals, workshops and masterclasses.

As a freelance trumpeter, Lawrence House has performed with numerous orchestras including the Toronto Symphony, National Arts Centre, National Ballet, American Symphony, Dallas Wind Symphony, and with such popular performers as Benny Goodman, Bob Crosby, Mel Torme, Woody Allen, and The Supremes. For 18 years he held the position of Principal Trumpet with the Saskatoon Symphony. In Saskatoon, Dr. House also spent over 20 years as professor of Trumpet at the University of Saskatchewan, and was head of its Department of Music from 1990 to 1995. In 1998, he moved to Texas to freelance in the Dallas area. Recently returning to Canada, he is a member of the Kingston Symphony and the Kingston Symphony Brass Quintet.

Wayne Tindale is the principal trumpet in the Kingston Symphony and has been a member of the orchestra since 1973. He has studied with Jimmy Reynolds, Dr. Duane Bates and Robert Oades. Wayne has Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Education degrees from Queen's University. He has been selected twice for the Outstanding Service Award for the old Frontenac Board of Education, once in 1980 as a teacher at Sydenham High School and again in 1998 at Frontenac Secondary School. In 1980 Wayne was selected to be on faculty for the Ontario Ministry of Education Music Leadership Course. In 1984 Wayne was asked to be on the administrative team which ran the Music Leadership Course for the Ministry of Education and served in that capacity until 1990.

Wayne has been a faculty member at the National Music Camp of Canada. He has taught trumpet majors in the Bachelor of Music program at Queen's University and has done this off and on since graduating from Queen's in 1974. He is also an original member of the Kingston Symphony Brass Quintet.

Wayne is a well known trumpeter in the Kingston area not only for playing in the symphony and the brass quintet but also from solo performances, performing in the annual Kinsmen shows since 1970 and performing with many choral groups around town doing such works as the Messiah, Mass in B Minor, the Christmas Oratorio and many others.

Cory van Allen was born into a Canadian musical family in London, England, Cory started piano lessons at the age of five. Being enamoured of the sound of a French Horn, he switched, at the age of eleven, from studying piano to studying horn, where he made notable lack of progress for four years.

Inspired by a Dennis Brain recording that his parents, in desperation, gave him at the age of fifteen, he progressed sufficiently rapidly to become principal horn of the London Schools Symphony Orchestra two years later and, following that, of the London Youth Orchestra. At the age of nineteen, Cory furthered his musical studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

When his family returned to Canada in the mid-1970's, Cory attended Queen's University in Kingston (B.A. Hons. - Philosophy, '78, and M.B.A. '80), where he also played with the Kingston Symphony Orchestra. Cory has maintained his musical activities as a regular player in the Kingston Symphony, as well as through playing with other groups including the Nepean Symphony Orchestra, the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, and the Woods Manufacturing Company Brass Band - where he held the position of solo horn. Cory is also active as a French-horn teacher and chamber musician.

John graduated from Queen's in 1976 with a B.Mus. For the next 14 years, he was a trumpet player with the Kingston Symphony, pit orchestras for local musicals and a regular performer with other groups in Kingston and Brockville where he taught music at a local high school.

In 1990 John switched to Trombone and since 1993 has been the Bass Trombonist in the Kingston Symphony (with a brief stint as itinerant percussionist in there somewhere). John was one of the founding members of the Kingston Symphony Brass Quintet about 20 years ago. Many of the charts that the quintet plays are his arrangements.

He has also written arrangements for his wife’s Woodwind Trio (The Classically Hip), and for woodwind Quartets and Quintets. John has arranged music for 2 stage musicals and has been the music director for a number of others. While in Brockville, he performed with, and was musical director of, the Brockville Concert Band and the Brockville Operatic Society. Other groups he has performed with include the Quinte Symphony and The Greg Runions Big Band.

In 2005, John and a few friends from the KSO formed BrassWerks, an orchestral brass ensemble www.brasswerks.ca The group performs a series of concerts each year, with the emphasis on presenting great music and having fun.

As the trombonist in The Kingston Symphony Brass Quintet, John also develops performances/presentations for elementary schools. The quintet visits many schools in the Kingston area each year under the auspices of an Ontario Arts Council grant and performs at a wide variety of functions and in various Concert Series in and around Kingston. Please click here

John teaches theory, harmony, trombone, tuba and euphonium at his home in Kingston and has been spending more time composing and arranging in the last few years. He was recently commissioned to write a fanfare for the 40th anniversary of The National Music Camp of Canada where he teaches trombone each summer. For each of the past three years he has won the Humboldt State University (California) Brass Workshop Composition Competition. http://www.humboldt.edu/~extended/special/brass/index.html)

John recently received the invitation to conduct Orchestra Kingston, a new community orchestra that has been formed here in Kingston.

He is also a Martial Artist and holds a Nidan ranking in Karate. Between compositions, arrangements and rehearsals, he can usually be found on one of the local golf courses.

Sylvain Gagnon is a native of Shawinigan, Quebec. He began playing music in high school and his keen interest led him to learn all instruments in the band. Besides playing with BrassWerks and The Kingston Symphony Brass Quintet, Sylvain is the Band Master of the Royal Military College of Canada. Jack-of-all-trades, he also plays Trombone, Electric and Double-Bass in all styles of music.

He is currently Principal Tuba with the Kingston Symphony Orchestra, the Kingston Symphony Brass Quintet. He played trombone with Pico de Gallo, has toured the US with the Mel Perkins and the Percolators (Chicago) and even played at the famous Hofbrauhaus in Munich.

Sylvain also performed with the Victoria Symphony, The Penguins on Broadway, the Calgary Philharmonic, Kelly Jay, Dave Turner, Symphony Nova-Scotia Brass Quintet and Country Legend Wilf Carter. His name is on many recordings as conductor, arranger and musician. His career took him to Europe, the former USSR, Australia, Korea and China.