2024 Adjudicators

Winston Noren has been active as a teacher of voice for over 40 years. In 1992, he joined the voice faculty at the distinguished Mount Royal University Conservatory where he currently has a studio of 25 students. Many of his former students have gone on to have highly successful careers, most notably on Broadway and in opera houses throughout North America and Europe.

Mr. Noren has also given numerous masterclasses and workshops and is well known across Canada as an adjudicator for provincial and regional festivals. From 2000 to 2020, Mr. Noren was a member of the College of Examiners for the Royal Conservatory of Music.

For several years, Mr. Noren was active as a choral conductor. In addition to conducting a highly successful women’s choir from 1984 to 1990, he has also been a conductor for the Alberta Summer Music Workshop, the Mount Royal Children’s Choir, the Calgary Gilbert and Sullivan Society and the Alberta Centennial Choir. From 1998 to 2005, he was Director of Music at the Cathedral Church of the Redeemer in Calgary.

As a soloist, Mr. Noren, a baritone, performed frequently in recital and as a guest artist. He is a past president of the Southern Alberta Chapter of the National Association of Singing and a former instructor in the Mount Royal Vocal Academy, a program for teens designed to enhance their private lessons through participation in staged scenes, monthly recitals, masterclasses and musicianship classes.

B Mus, B.Ed. (Brandon), MMus (University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, North Dakota),  DMA (University of North Texas, Denton, Texas)

Symphonic Band, Graduate and Undergraduate Conducting, and Instrumental Music Education

Dr. Wendy Zander is a Professor in the Brandon University School of Music where she conducts the Symphonic Band and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in music education and conducting.

Committed to excellence in music education, Zander taught band and general elementary music before pursuing graduate studies.  In addition to designing professional development sessions for music educators, she has presented at provincial music education conferences, College Band Directors National Association regional conference, and the International Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic.  Her work as a solo and ensemble adjudicator and clinician for concert and jazz ensembles has taken her across Canada and the United States.  She serves as guest conductor of university, community, and military ensembles, as conductor at the International and Rushmore Music Camps, and as facilitator of conducting symposia.  She has conducted junior high and high school regional, provincial, and state honor bands and was the conductor of the 2018 National Youth Band of Canada.

Zander has worked to create professional opportunities for students and music educators in the areas of performance and music education.  For fifteen years Zander hosted Avenues: Exploring Band and Jazz Methods, an annual summer professional development workshop at Brandon University.  She is Faculty Advisor for the Brandon University Student Music Educators Association (BUSMEA), the organization that hosts the annual Da Capo professional development conference.  The Brandon University Symphonic Band, with Zander as conductor, performed as the featured ensemble at the 2009 Atlantic Band Festival in Halifax, Nova Scotia and the 2013 Con Brio Music Festival in Whistler, British Columbia.  Zander was awarded Brandon University Alumni Association’s Excellence in Teaching Award as well as the Manitoba Band Association’s Award of Distinction and the Canadian Band Association’s National Band Award.  She is a Teaching Affiliate with Brandon University’s Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Technology and an Educational Clinician with the Conn-Selmer Division of Education.

Zander holds the Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Education degrees from Brandon University and completed a Master of Music in Instrumental Conducting at the University of North Dakota with Gordon Brock and James Popejoy.  She received her Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of North Texas where she served as a Doctoral Conducting Associate and Teaching Fellow in the Wind Studies Department with Eugene Migliaro Corporon.  She completed her cognate studies in Music Education with Deborah Rohwer and Darhyl Ramsey.

Zander worked as Lead Writer of the Manitoba Grade 9-12 Music Curriculum Framework, has published in Canadian Winds, and is a regular contributor to the publication and recording series Teaching Music Through Performance in Band and Teaching Music Through Performance in Beginning Band.  She is former President of the Manitoba Band Association and Canadian Band Association.  Zander, active as a conductor and clinician, investigates areas related to teaching and learning, conducting, and instrumental literature as curriculum in the music classroom.

Sandra Joy Friesen is a pianist with a broad range of repertoire and musical interests, from traditional to contemporary, to interpretation of pictorial scores and interdisciplinary improvisation. She has performed as soloist and chamber musician throughout Canada, in the United States, and several countries in South America and Europe. With a special sensitivity in art song collaboration, Sandra Joy has studied and performed this vast repertoire for more than three decades, including residencies at The Banff Centre (Alberta) and the Franz-Schubert-Institute (Austria). She is the pianist in the duo RESPONS2 with visual artist Werner Friesen, blending music with live-response painting, and integrating artistic disciplines with composers, dancers, and actors. Her 2014 recording Sound Reflections, Vol. 1: Off the Shelf is dedicated to Canadian composers and addresses challenges in contemporary techniques and notation.

A music educator since 1992, Sandra Joy investigates the developments in piano techniques, styles and aesthetics from the 20^th-21st centuries and has dedicated a large part of her career to lectures, presentations, workshops and concerts of contemporary music. After 16 years of professional work in British Columbia, she completed the Doctor of Music degree as a scholar of the Kule Institute for Advanced Studies in the University of Alberta. She holds degrees from the University of British Columbia (Master and Bachelor of Music) and Canadian Mennonite University (Bachelor of Church Music). Dr. Friesen was Visiting Assistant Professor of Piano in the Department of Music at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota from 2013-2015. She now teaches from her Sound Reflections Music Studio in NW Calgary, and continues to perform a full spectrum of repertoire.

Orchestra Faculty – Director & Conductor Conservatory Sinfonia

Strings Faculty (violin and viola)
Chris Sandvoss studied violin with his mother, an early childhood specialist, and viola with the eminent teachers Harold Gomez, John Thompson, and John Lowry. He went on to work with some of the world’s legendary pedagogues, including Gerald Stanick, Hatto Beyerle, Karen Tuttle, Martha Strongin-Katz, and Donald McInnes. Mr. Sandvoss performed and taught at festivals in Europe and North America, and appeared as an orchestra musician, conductor, soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician on stage, radio, TV, and CD. He was the founding violist of the internationally renowned Lands End Ensemble, the 13th St. Trio, and the UCalgary Quartet. Mr. Sandvoss has taught at The University of Calgary and the Mount Royal University Conservatory, where he currently teaches Violin, Viola, Chamber Music, facilitates the Viola Academy/AP Program and conducts the Conservatory Sinfonia.