Notice Board

Southminster United Church Chapel | 8:30pm & 10:00pm Performances | December 21

Sweet Breath Women's Ensemble is a small women’s ensemble with a big heart and the extraordinary patience to learn the music of Hildegard von Bingen using coloured facsimilies of the original neumes. Its members share their voices amid the windy coulees of Southern Alberta, comprised of faculty and alumni of the University of Lethbridge.

Regan Brooks is a singer, conductor and educator from Medicine Hat, Alberta. Bonnie Chartier is passionate about making music, her family, cooking and her job as a 911 dispatcher. Karen Hudson, is a graduate of the University of Lethbridge. She is a singer and choral music educator and currently serves as the President of Choir Alberta, the provincial choral organization. Jaimee Jarvie received her BMus in vocal performance from the University of Lethbridge in 2014. She has performed locally and internationally in many operas and choirs. She has a passion for early music and is thrilled to be performing with her friends and colleagues of Sweet Breath. Soprano Ruth Phillips, originally from Nova Scotia, completed graduate studies in Montreal, where she was a busy soloist and choral singer; she later relocated to Lethbridge, AB where she continues to sing and teach. Janet Youngdahl sang with Ensemble Sequentia in Germany for ten years. She appears on over 15 recordings with BMG, Harmonia Mundi, Phillips, BIS, RCA, Centaur and Toccata Classics.

Conductor Janet Youngdahl is a professor of music at the University of Lethbridge andconductor for the University of Lethbridge Singers. She is the past conductor of the CalgaryBach Society, Spiritus Chamber Choir, Calgary Renaissance Singers and was also an assistantconductor for the Calgary Philharmonic Chorus. Major conducted works for choir and orchestrainclude Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, Handel’s Messiah and the Dixit Dominus, C.P.E. Bach’sPassion Cantata. She has served as an adjudicator and clinician in Medicine Hat, Calgary, Banff,Canmore, Red Deer, Grande Prairie and Edmonton. She has recently attended extended artistresidencies at the American Academy in Rome and at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Janet holds amasters of music degree from the University of Michigan and a doctorate from the ClevelandInstitute of Music at Case Western Reserve University. She has a new recording coming out in2017 of works by Barbara Strozzi recorded at the Jane Austen Chawton House Library in the UKwith soprano Catherine Bott and Cecilia’s Circle.