Artistic Team

Jennifer Moir

Kaleid Festival Artistic Director

Jennifer Moir is a highly respected conductor, educator and adjudicator with a growing international reputation. She is the recipient of numerous teaching awards and was honoured with the distinguished Leslie Bell Prize Award for Choral Conducting from the Ontario Art Council in 2004. In May of 2010, she was nominated for the Premiere’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts, in the category of Emerging Artists. Under her direction, choirs
have won national and international awards through the CBC Choral Competition, The Choral Olympics, Linz, Austra, Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod, Wales and have been broadcast on CBC Radio.

At Western University in London, ON, Canada, Jennifer conducts Les Choristes (women’s choir) and The Chorale (mixed choir). In addition to her voice studio, Jennifer teaches Vocal Methods and Choral Conducting and leads an experiential learning course, “Community Through Choral Art”.

Away from the university, Ms. Moir is invited regularly to serve as a clinician for festivals, coach for choirs and vocal ensembles and workshops facilitator for music students and educators across North America, Europe and Scandinavia. Highlights include artist residencies at the Sibelius Academy and the Konservatori in Helsinki, Finland, language coach for Finnish recording artists, Rajaton and rock sensation, Santa Cruz,
Tampere International Choral Festival, and the Inspiration Choir Camp, Sibelius Academy. Jennifer has adjudicated voice and choirs at both the national and international level and has served on faculty with The Voice Care Network, St. John’s University, Minnesota. She has served as an Artistic Director with the Amabile organization in London ON, The Woodstock Fanshawe
Singers and Project Sing!


Jennifer is a co-founder and Co-Artistic Director of The Mo(i)r Light Center for Sound Music Education, which now hosts The Kaleid Choral Festival. This non-competitive “kaleidoscope of voices” has played host to internationally renoun vocal group and Honorary Kaleid Festival Patrons, Rajaton (Finland), The Black Umfolosi 5 (Zimbabwe), Cadence (Canada) and FreePlay Duo (Canada) and Essi Wuorela (Finland). Through this festival and regular programming with community and university choirs,
Jennifer has commissioned over 60 new choral works to date by Canadian composers.

Alison Girvan

Kaleid Festival Guest Clinician 

Allison Girvan’s music career has seen experience as a professional singer, arranger,
director, clinician and adjudicator. She has been a featured soloist on recordings and
in performance with ensembles including musica intima, Elektra Women’s Choir,
The Vancouver Chamber Choir, the CBC Vancouver Orchestra, the Vancouver
Symphony Orchestra, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and as a vocalist for
studio sessions for radio, T.V. and feature film. Allison has worked extensively with
Canadian Celtic Tenor, John McDermott, on recordings, international tours, and
the PBS specials, A Time to Remember and Sharing Christmas. Her debut solo cd,
Resonance, combining her love of world music and her love of languages, was
released in 2007 and the follow up cd, Fishing By the Light of the Ancestors was
released in 2014. She now lives in Nelson, B.C. where she continues to record for
television and feature film scores, though her greatest passion is working with
youth.


Allison is the director of the youth choirs, VoixVive and Solstice, as well as Corazón
Vocal Ensemble and young adult choir, Lalin. She is also the music director for the
Capitol Theatre’s Summer Youth Program.

 Moira Smiley 

Kaleid Festival Guest Artist 

Moira Smiley is a Singer / Composer who creates and performs new work for voices.  A musical polyglot, and vocal shape-shifter, her voice – and composing - are heard on feature films, BBC & PBS television programs, NPR, and on more than 60 albums. She accompanies herself with banjo, accordion, piano and percussive movement, and when she’s not leading her own group, moira smiley & VOCO, Moira has toured with Indie artist tUnE-yArDs, Irish super-group, SolasThe Lomax Project and Billy Childs’ “Laura Nyro Re-Imagined”.  She’s also toured with Paul Hillier’s Theater of Voices and KITKA.  Recent solo performances include TED, Stravinsky’s ‘Les Noces’, the London Proms Festival, features on BBC Radio3, and ABC Australia’s Books & Arts programs. Moira’s recordings feature spare, vocally driven collections of warped traditional songs, original polyphony and body percussion.  She is a well-known choral composer (recent commissions included for Los Angeles Master Chorale) and arranger, with millions of singers around the world singing her works.  In 2018, she released a solo album and choral songbook called ‘Unzip The Horizon’.