Conductors
Since its founding in 1959, the Vancouver Cantata Singers has been shaped by a succession of visionary conductors whose artistic direction has guided the choir’s evolution and excellence. From early performances of sacred masterworks to bold contemporary premieres, each conductor has left an enduring mark on the ensemble’s sound, spirit, and legacy.
Hugh McLean
1958-1967
Hugh McLean, Canadian born, received his early musical training in Winnipeg and Vancouver. Later, he went to England on scholarship, where he studied piano and organ at the Royal College of Music in London.
In 1951, he became organ scholar of King’s College, Cambridge, and graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1956 with degrees in musicology and organ. He made his professional debut at the Royal Command Concert in November 1955 in the presence of Queen Elizabeth, playing the Malcolm Arnold Organ Concerto with Sir Adrian Boult and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
For many years, he lived in Vancouver and was active in the musical life of the city. The Cantata Singers, which he founded in 1958, gave first performances of many important choral works, and the Hugh McLean Consort introduced much of the Baroque instrumental literature to Vancouver audiences.
In 1981, he resumed full-time teaching in the Faculty and the organistship of the Church of St. John the Evangelist, London, Ontario. As an organ recitalist, Mr. McLean played in all the major Canadian centres as well as in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis.
In 1963, he undertook a series of recordings for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on historic organs of England, the Netherlands, and the German Democratic Republic. He also broadcast for the BBC in England, Swiss Radio, and NHK Tokyo.
In 1970, he was invited to play in Bach’s church, St. Thomas’s, Leipzig. Recent tours took him in 1972 to Switzerland, in 1975 to Finland and Norway, and in 1976 to Japan. During the 1980–81 season, he was resident in Cambridge, England, and gave many recitals in Britain and on the Continent.
In September 1982, he was chosen to inaugurate the large concert organ at the opening of Toronto’s new Roy Thomson Hall, performing the Poulenc Concerto with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrew Davis.
Hugh McLean was well-known in Canada as a musicologist specializing in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century studies. He published definitive editions of the organ works of Purcell and Krebs, and wrote nineteen articles for the new edition of Grove’s Dictionary. In 1977, his contribution to musicology in Canada was recognized by election to a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Canada.
Hugh McLean passed away peacefully on July 30, 2017, in Naples, FL.
John Wiebe
1967-1973
John Wiebe was brought on board by Hugh McLean to prepare VCS for a performance of Bach’s St. John Passion, providing an opportunity for choir and possible-new-conductor to work together.
John was a public school teacher in Burnaby, had received his music training in Detmold, Germany, and was already known to Vancouverites through his Motet Singers, drawn from the city’s musical German-speaking community. During his initial years with us, VCS was essentially an amalgamation of singers from VCS and the Motet Singers.
The Vancouver Cantata Society Membership List of 1969 lists 20 sopranos, 19 altos, 12 tenors and 7 basses.
Forty years later, VCS alumni still remember John fondly, recalling that he was always looking for new choral music (Schütz, Kodály, Byrd, Dunstable). One alumna lovingly described John as a “big but gentle lad” who was always pushing the choir “in his gentle way” to sing more challenging repertoire.
Alumni recall John conducting Bach’s Christmas Oratorio (with John Vickers as soloist) and performing Mozart’s Coronation Mass from the back balcony at St. James Anglican Church, much as Mozart would have done.
James Fankhauser
1973-2000
The Vancouver Cantata Singers’ longest serving Artistic Director, James Fankhauser became the outstanding musician he is today in a somewhat roundabout manner. He grew up in Kansas, where he began his musical training as a lyric tenor and trombonist.
An ill-fated year studying Engineering at university convinced him that his talents lay elsewhere, and he switched to the study of music. He earned a degree in performance from the Oberlin Conservatory, and pursued post-graduate studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London and at Oxford University on a Fulbright Scholarship.
After returning to the United States, Fankhauser received his Master of Arts in Musicology from the University of California. In 1972, he was granted a Rockefeller Fellowship to attend the Aspen Choral Institute as a Conducting Fellow. His excellence in these studies led to his return a year later with an Assistant Directorship.
James Fankhauser has been the recipient of several awards, including the University of British Columbia’s 75th Anniversary Outstanding Teacher award in 1990. His choirs, which have included the University Singers, the Cantata Singers, and a short-lived chamber group called Chrysalis, have won several prizes in both national and international competitions.
Peter Butterfield
2001-2002
Since his debut as tenor soloist with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in 1982, Peter Butterfield has been performing internationally. He grew up in Victoria, Canada, studied at McGill University in Montreal, moved to Europe in 1987, and continued his vocal studies and the building of his solo tenor career in Manchester, Florence, and London.
In Canada, he has appeared with the Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Kingston, and Victoria Symphony Orchestras, as well as with Symphony Nova Scotia, Tafelmusik, and Le Studio de Musique Ancienne de Montréal.
Recordings include the Rachmaninov Vespers with the Philharmonia Chorus, Purcell with Winchester Cathedral Choir, and Haydn Masses with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists under Gardiner. A 2002 recording of Haydn’s Masses under Sir John Eliot Gardiner on the Philips label was named CD of the Month by Gramophone magazine.
His 2006 solo engagements included Bach’s St Matthew Passion for the Victoria Symphony, the Emperor of China in Puccini’s Turandot for Vancouver Opera, and the tenor solo with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in a mass by Arvo Pärt.
Peter Butterfield began choral conducting alongside his singing in 1995. He conducted various groups in England (being based there from 1991 to 2001) as a guest, and he was an associate conductor of I Solisti Madrigale in Florence, Italy, from 1991 to 1996.
He moved back to the West Coast in 2001 and was the Artistic Director and Conductor of the Vancouver Cantata Singers for the 2001–2002 season. Peter has conducted several choral workshops as the guest of choirs in the Lower Mainland, and he participated in the 2005 International Choral Conductors’ Workshop sponsored by the Vancouver Chamber Choir.
He established the semi-professional chamber choir VancouverVoices in 2003, VancouverVoicesYouth in 2005, and the professional VancouverVoicesQuartet in 2006.
Eric Hannan
2002-2012
Eric Hannan is an experienced choral conductor who has built an enthusiastic and loyal following among Vancouver’s choral community over the past sixteen years. Under his direction, the Vancouver Cantata Singers have kept alive their passion for choral excellence and maintained their position among the ranks of Canada’s foremost choral ensembles.
In addition to conducting the Vancouver Cantata Singers, Eric is on the music faculty at Douglas College, in his 14th year directing the choral program and teaching solo voice.
Eric completed a degree in music composition at the University of British Columbia, where he studied conducting for three years with mentor James Fankhauser. He then went on to graduate study in conducting at the Universities of Michigan and Illinois.
More recently, Eric studied conducting with Frieder Bernius at the International Academy of Advanced Choral Conducting in 2000. He also served on the faculty of the Nelson Summer Songfest in 2003 and 2004, where he assisted Simon Carrington with the popular community choral program and directed the small ensemble component of the solo voice program headed by Nancy Argenta.
He is active locally as a choral clinician and pays frequent visits to Greater Vancouver’s high school choirs to help foster our next generation of choral singers and enthusiasts.
Paula Kremer
2012-Present
Born in Vancouver and educated at the Vancouver Academy of Music and the University of British Columbia, Paula Kremer has studied choral conducting in courses and workshops at Eton, Westminster Choir College, the Eastman School of Music, and the University of Michigan.
Holding an ARCT in both piano and voice from the Royal Conservatory of Music, Paula has also studied voice with Phyllis Mailing, Bruce Pullan, Marisa Gaetanne, and Laura Pudwell, and piano with Margot Ehling.
A full-time faculty member of the School of Music at Vancouver Community College, she teaches voice, solfège, and choir. She was also the director of two Vancouver Bach Choir ensembles for young adults from 2009 to 2017: the Vancouver Bach Youth Choir and the Sarabande Chamber Choir.
Paula joined the alto section of the Vancouver Cantata Singers in 1994, and has been the ensemble’s Artistic Director since 2013.
