Our Artists
ALEXANDER DUNN
Alex has completed extensive summer studies at the Aspen Festival and Sommerakademie Mozarteum. His performances and activities at music festivals include Darmstadt, Salzburg, Vancouver New Music, International Guitar and Lute Institute, Stetson Internatioanl Guitar Workshop, Guitar Foundation of America, Boston GuitarFest, Northwest Guitar Festival, Paracho Festival de Guitarra, Vancouver Festival, Early Music Society of the Islands, CBC Festival de Printemps, Zihuatenejo International Guitar Festival, Appalachian Guitar Festival, Singapore Youth Festival, and many others.
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Dr. Dunn has performed in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Eastern and Western Europe, Russia, Ukraine, China, Southeast Asia, New Zealand, Japan, South Africa, Cuba, and numerous other places. A sought after instructor, his students are regular prize winners at regional and national competitions.
Dr. Dunn is an examiner for the Royal Conservatory of Music and currently heads what is considered one of Canada’s top guitar programs at the University of Victoria and the Victoria Conservatory of Music.
ANNA CAL
Anna is trained in the famous tradition of Russian piano schools. She studied at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory in St. Petersburg with well-known Russian performers and professors including Vitaly Berzon, Pavel Yegorov and the late Helen Shishko. She holds Master degrees with high distinction in three fields: piano performance, piano pedagogy and collaborative piano.
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After studying in Russia, Anna spent two years in Rome, Italy where she worked as a soloist and a voice coach.
Anna is a senior teacher at the Victoria Conservatory of Music where she teaches piano, piano pedagogy and collaborative piano. She is Director of Collaborative piano and Interpretation in German Lieder Projects. Anna is a frequent performer in Victoria as a soloist and in collaboration with vocalists and instrumentalists.
PHILLIP MANNING
As the recipient of a full scholarship, Philip spent time in the USA completing a Graduate Level Artist Diploma in Violin Performance at Duquesne University under the tutelage of Professor Charles Stegeman. Philip won the Duquesne Concerto Competition and was also awarded the honor of being Concertmaster of the Duquesne Symphony Orchestra for the duration of his time there. He was a finalist in the Canada Council of the Arts Instrument Bank Competition in 2015, and in June of 2015, was invited to perform with other well-known international orchestral musicians at the annual Sunflower Music Festival in Kansas, under the direction of distinguished conductor Maestro Andres Cardenes .
In 2013, Philip was accepted on full scholarship to the intensive Violin Institute at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois and in 2012, on full scholarship to the Symphony Orchestra Academy of the Pacific under Maestro Arthur Arnold.
Upon his return to Canada, Philip has been busy performing many solo and chamber concerts to full houses and appreciative audiences. Over his career, Philip has performed as a feature soloist with several orchestras and has recently been successful in his first two professional orchestral auditions. Philip has chosen to make this his home and is the Victoria Symphony’s most recent full time member.
GUYONNE LE LOUARN
Born in France, Guyonne began to study violin at the age of five in Rennes, then Nantes. She switched for the viola in 1993 and went on to study chamber music, theory and history of music, orchestral work and conducting in Nantes and Paris earning multiple gold medals in all disciplines. Meanwhile she earned a degree in Early Music under the tutelage of Daniel Cuiller in Nantes.
In 1998, she won the Paris Interschool competition with outstanding grade and was a finalist at the National Viola Competition in Epernay in 1999. She also played for Atar Arad (Bloomington University). In 2000, Guyonne moved to Toulouse in the CEMS’ soloist program, receiving the “Aida foundation scholarship for Young Musicians”. She was also principal viola of the Toulouse National Conservatory’s chamber orchestra.
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In 2001, Guyonne came to the Victoria Conservatory of Music where she received an associate teaching diploma in viola and violin from the Victoria Conservatory of music in the fall of 2003 with a specialization in 2004 in chamber music coaching. Guyonne won numerous awards at the 2002 and 2003 Greater Victoria Performing Arts Festival and represented Victoria at the Provincial Festival in Kamloops in 2003. She studied with J. Coupé, D. Binder, T. Adamopoulos, D. Mujica, B. Godhoof and D. Vann.
Guyonne has performed extensively in Europe and as far as Oman. She is the assistant principal viola of the Vancouver Island Symphony and is a free-lance chamber musician and recitalist. She is the managing partner of Maggie Music LLP, a newly formed music school in Victoria with 12 faculty and 100 students, and the artistic director of the summer academy “Violins at the Val”, in northern Brittany, France. Since 2017, she is the section head of the Strings section of the GVPAF.
ANNE GRIMM
Dutch soprano Anne Grimm studied violin and voice at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam and received scholarships from the Fonds voor de Podiumkunsten to pursue her vocal studies in London and in the US through the Steans Institute at the Ravinia Festival. Since then she has been held in high regard for her work in opera, concert and recital throughout Europe, North America as well as Australia and New Zealand.
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Recognized for her performances of contemporary music, Ms. Grimm toured with Aventa Ensemble to Calgary, Montreal and New York City performing works of Saariaho and Gonneville as well as opening the Adelaide Festival in Australia as Marilyn Monroe in Gavin Bryars’ chamber opera, Marilyn Forever. Other performances have included Christopher Butterfield’s Contes pour enfants pas sage with Continuum in Toronto as well as performing music of Gavin Bryars with the composer for the Victoria Symphony. Most recently she performed the role of Barate in Rudolf Komorous’ Chamber Opera The Mute Canary with Turning Point ensemble of Vancouver touring to Prague and Ostrava in the Czech Republic.
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Ms. Grimm has recorded extensively for Erato, NM Classics, Vanguard Classics, Troubadisc, Sony Classics and Harmonia Mundi France as well as for CBC Radio, ZDF, RAI, Radio France and VARA in the Netherlands.
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Since 2009 she has been on the Voice Faculty at the UVic School of Music and regularly adjudicates and teaches masterclasses at the Victoria Conservatory of Music.