Please note - The information for the music for String Camp 2024 has been posted and camp registrants are given instructions about how to download parts for the 2024 string camp repertoire upon registration. It includes the following with a proviso that some further revisions/cuts may be made in due course.

Strathcona County String Music Camp - Summer Repertoire 2024 includes the following:

"Divertimento in F, KV138 W.A. Mozart"

"Abdelazer Suite - "The Moor's Revenge" Henry Purcell

"Ancient Dances and Airs, Suite III, O. Respighi"

"Suite for Strings John Rutter"

"Impromptu for String Orchestra Jean Sibelius"

"La Bella Cubana Jose White"

 

Our Camp Director, Conductor and Music Coaches

 

CAMP DIRECTOR: Murray Vaasjo

Murray was born and raised in Edmonton and attended the University of Alberta where he received a Bachelor of Music degree. He has been a member of the Okanagan Symphony, the Victoria Symphony, the Alberta Baroque Ensemble, the Arden Ensemble, National Youth Orchestra of Canada and the Edmonton Youth Orchestra. Murray studied with Sally Thomas in Meadowmount, New York and with Shirley Givens and Sidney Humphries in Victoria.

In 1990 Murray returned to Edmonton to join the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.

Murray is also active as a teacher and is the co-founder of the Wye String Ensemble.

Murray conducted the Penticton Strings, an amateur adult orchestra in the Okanagan.

For two seasons, he conducted musicals with the Penticton Singers and Players with professional members of the Okanagan Symphony. He was the conductor and founder of the Sherwood Park Youth Strings and Penticton Junior Strings. Murray is happy to conduct both the Wye String Ensemble and the Edmonton Philharmonic Orchestra next season.

 

 

CONDUCTOR: Cossette Justo Valdés

Cosette Justo Valdés is the Resident Conductor of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. She has been with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra since the 2018-2019 season, when she started as the Assistant Conductor and Community Ambassador. Born and raised in Cuba, as a daughter of amateur musicians, she’s loved music all of her life, and she began learning piano and music theory from age 8. At 18 she saw a symphony orchestra for the first time and immediately knew she wanted to be a conductor. She took up conducting in 2002 at the National Institute of the Arts of Cuba, in Havana, and after graduating in 2009 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Orchestral Conducting, she was appointed Music & Artistic Director of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Oriente (OSO) (Santiago, Cuba), Cuba’s second-most important orchestra.

During her first three years at the OSO, Cosette organized and conducted numerous concerts of a broad repertoire of classical, jazz, pop, and traditional Cuban music, which allowed her to start consolidating her foundation as a conductor. She also developed several programs for improving the technical and musical level of the orchestra, and founded a Kid’s Orchestra and a Youth Orchestra, both tutored by the musicians of the professional orchestra. With Cuba’s OSO, Cosette conducted premières for some of Cuba’s best known composers. She also performed the Cuban première of Domenico Scarlatti’s intermezzo La Dirindina, including designing the costumes, sets, super-titles and directing the overall artistic production.

In 2012, Cosette entered the Mannheim Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst (State University for Music & Performing Arts) in Germany, to learn more about conducting classical repertoire from the European perspective, and she earned her Master’s Degree in 2018. She has conducted many orchestral, choral, and chamber ensembles in Europe, while remaining Music & Artistic Director of the OSO and returning often to conduct it.

Her passion for 20th century music inspired her to conduct a performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 1 with the National Orchestra of Cuba in Havana for the first time in more than 30 years. She also organized several large projects combining the forces of the two major symphonic orchestras of Eastern Cuba. Cosette also brought to the OSO for the first time pieces like Shostakovich’s Symphonies Nos. 1 and 5, West Side Story Suite by Leonard Bernstein (in his centenary, performed in January, 2018), Symphony No. 1 by Robert Schumann, Symphony No. 5 by Felix Mendelssohn, Pulcinella Suite by Igor Stravinsky, The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives, and others. She conducted concerts specifically for children to give them an opportunity to get to know an orchestra and its instruments.

 

 

Camp Coordinator - Miriam Ferguson

Miriam Ferguson began studying the viola at the age of eleven when she joined the Edmonton Public Schools Strings Program.

In 1997, she graduated from the University of Alberta with a Bachelor of Music Degree in performance on the viola. She decided four years later to return to the University of Alberta and graduated in 2003 with a Bachelor of Education Degree. Her viola teachers have included Miyo Inouye, Norman Nelson, Jonathan Craig, Tom Johnson and Rivka Golani.

Miriam Ferguson has been the principal violist of the Edmonton Youth Orchestra, the University of Alberta’s Academy Strings and the University Symphony Orchestra. She occasionally plays in the viola section of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.

Miriam is currently busy as a private violin and viola instructor, freelance musician and, more recently, conductor. She conducts the Music Enrichment Program’s Beginner Student Orchestra and Beginner Adult Ensemble and often subs in to lead the WyeString Ensemble.

Miriam Ferguson also performs with Quartetto con Brio, the Ursus String Quartet, and with the Cifra Hungarian Folk Music Ensemble. The Cifra Ensemble has performed with the Edmonton Symphony and has been broadcast on CBC Radio One. Miriam has twice visited Hungary and Romania with the Cifra Ensemble to study and perform authentic village folk music.

 

 

 

 

COACHES

Violin I Instructor/Chamber Coach: Anna Kozak

Anna Kozak is a core member of the first violin section with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, an Assistant Concertmaster of the Alberta Baroque Ensemble and a Principal Second Violin of the Chamber Orchestra of Edmonton. She has earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Toronto and a Master of Music degree from the University of Calgary.

Anna loves being an orchestral musician. It’s a profession that has taken her to concert halls all over Europe as well as Carnegie Hall in New York.

Being a violinist, Anna finds life just wouldn’t be complete without chamber music. She’s been very fortunate to have been a part of many wonderful chamber groups and have performed in most exciting venues. She’s been a founding member of the Onyx String Quartet and Tersona Piano Trio. She’s performed at Winspear countless times at ESO events, at the Rozsa Centre with University of Calgary professor Edmond Agopian, at the Yardbird Suite with the Obsessions Octet to name a few.

She’s had the pleasure of performing solos with the Alberta Baroque Ensemble, the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and the Alberta College Percussion Ensemble.

Besides performing Anna finds it fulfilling to share her passion and knowledge with her students. She holds a small private studio, teaches at the annual Wye Strings Camp and on occasion leads coaching sessions for local amateur groups.

Anna is playing on a violin made in 1770 by Giovanni Battista Gabrielli of Florence.

Once she is done all her practicing, performing or teaching, Anna enjoys spending time with her husband on their acreage. Gardening (especially cutting grass with her new tractor Deer Johny), reading, taking long walks, listening to the birds...

 

Violin II Instructor/Chamber Coach- Ewald Cheung

 

Edmonton native Ewald Cheung joined the ESO's first violin section in 2018 after earning performance degrees at the Juilliard School and McGill University.

A prize-winner in multiple violin competitions and an avid chamber musician, Ewald was a founding member of the Roddick String Quartet and Geistrio, and has performed extensively around Canada in recitals, chamber music collaborations, and as soloist with orchestras.

Ewald can be heard on his 2015 recording with pianist Philip Chiu, "A Tribute to Fritz Kreisler."

 

 

Viola Instructor/Chamber Coach - Ethan Filner

 

American-born violist of the San Francisco-based, internationally acclaimed Cypress String Quartet from 2001-2016, Ethan Filner studied at Indiana University-Bloomington, Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and New England Conservatory.

Ethan has been the ESO's Assistant Principal Violist since 2019, having previously held the same position with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony from 2017-19 and taught viola at the University of Toronto from 2016-19. With the CSQ until they disbanded.

Ethan has recorded nearly 20 albums, performed concerts in major and minor venues all across North America and Europe, commissioned and premiered dozens of new works for string quartet (and a few for solo viola), presented educational outreach programs for tens of thousands of students of all ages, and collaborated with many of the most inspiring musical artists of our time.

 

Cello Instructor/Chamber Coach: Julie Hereish

 

Born in Montreal, Julie Hereish joined the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra as Assistant Principal Cello in 2019. Previously, she held the same position in the Québec Symphony Orchestra. Julie is a member of the High Level Trio and the Garneau String Quartet, both based in Edmonton. The GSQ is the quartet in residence at Grant MacEwan University’s Conservatory of Music, where it holds the Chamber Music Academy program for young music students. The High Level Trio recently released the first world recording of John Estacio’s Navigations for String Trio, a commission from the group.

Julie has performed extensively with the chamber orchestra Violons du Roy in Québec City and throughout Europe and North America. Together with actor Pierre Mayer, she created Charlot et Mlle Cello, a theatrical concert experience for children based on Charlie Chaplin’s famous character. During the pandemic, being in isolation with husband and violist Keith Hamm led to the start of The New Cohort. The duet went on tour in the Maritimes with Debut Atlantic in the Fall of 2022.