The Canadian Music Centre presents Canadian Irish Art Song, a concert featuring soprano Maeve Palmer and pianist Jialiang Zhu. The two artists will explore the intersections between Irish traditions and Western lyric musical idioms — the hidden history of Irish art song.
The event takes place October 23 at the Canadian Music Centre in Toronto.
The Music
Sean-nós singing is an unaccompanied genre of traditional Irish vocal music. It’s typically performed in the Irish language. Musically, it entails long melodic phrases, intricate ornamentation, and melismatic melodic lines, i.e. where a single syllable is sung over multiple pitches. As a genre, it was one of several traditional styles, and was practised across Ireland, with many regional variations, and still exists where Irish is still spoken, including areas of County Galway, parts of Kerry, Cork and Waterford, and elsewhere.
The vocal style becomes part of modern Irish art song, and has influenced composers of the Isle for centuries.
The program includes music from 18th-century traditional melodies to arrangements of Benjamin Britten, and the work of contemporary composer Donnacha Dennehy.
Born in Dublin, Dennehy studied music at Trinity College, followed by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), with support from a Fulbright Scholarship, where he earned his Master’s and Doctoral degrees. Dennehy was a visiting scholar at Princeton University from 2012, and joined the faculty of music department in 2014. Recent work includes the BBC commission Hard Landing, a piece about the Miracle on the Hudson, which premiered with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales on February 6, 2025, and was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on March 29, 2025.
The Artists
Maeve Palmer, soprano
Soprano Maeve Palmer is a Dora Award-winner who has performed with Tapestry Opera, New Music Concerts, Continuum Contemporary Music, Opera Atelier, Off-Centre Music, Chorus Niagara, Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, Orpheus Choir of Toronto, and on tour with the Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition, among others. This year, she’s performed in a concert production of Die Fledermaus with the Stratford Symphony Orchestra, as the soprano soloist in Bach’s Mass in B Minor with Chorus Niagara, and as Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid’s Tale (Ruders/arr. Schlossberg) at the Banff Centre.
Maeve won the 2021 Jim and Charlotte Norcop Prize in Song from the University of Toronto, and was the second prize winner of the 2017 Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition. She earned a Doctor of Musical Arts in Voice Pedagogy and Performance from the University of Toronto, and is also an alumna of the Rebanks Family Fellowship and International Performance Residency Program at the Glenn Gould School, and the Sidgwick Scholar Program with the Orpheus Choir of Toronto (2015–18).
Jialiang Zhu, piano
Pianist Jialiang Zhu is on the faculty of The Taylor Academy and Oscar Peterson School of Music at the Royal Conservatory. The Chinese pianist moved to Toronto in 2007, where she earned a Doctor of Musical Arts in Collaborative Piano, a Master’s in Piano Performance and Pedagogy, and a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance (Honours), all from the University of Toronto.
She has taught previously at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music, and beyond teaching piano, she is a passionate vocal coach. Jialiang specializes in Chinese vocal repertoire, and has coached vocalists from a variety of backgrounds in Chinese songs, as well as performing with them at the Canadian Opera Company, University of Toronto, University of Ottawa, University of Manitoba, Canadian Museum for Human Rights, and Beijing Central Conservatory of Music.
As a pianist, she is the co-founder of the Bedford Trio, a Toronto-based ensemble known for performing both classical and contemporary chamber music. With The Bedford Trio, she has toured across North America and German, and served as Artists-in-Residence at the University of Toronto’s Composition Department.
The Concert
CMC Presents: Canadian Irish Art Song on October 23 at the CMC hall.
- Find concert details and tickets [HERE].
Are you looking to promote an event? Have a news tip? Need to know the best events happening this weekend? Send us a note.
#LUDWIGVAN
Get the daily arts news straight to your inbox.
Sign up for the Ludwig Van Toronto e-Blast! — local classical music and opera news straight to your inbox HERE.
- PREVIEW | Sinfonia Toronto Baroque & Beyond Celebrates the Season With Guest Artists The Ezra Duo - December 4, 2025
- INTERVIEW | Director Peter Phillips Talks About The Tallis Scholars And Their Toronto Concert - December 4, 2025
- PREVIEW | The Royal Conservatory Of Music Launches Orchestrated With Cory Wong - December 3, 2025
