Mark Vuorinen is Artistic Director of the Grand Philharmonic Choir, The Elora Singers and the Elora Festival. He is also Associate Professor and Chair of Music at Conrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo, where he is responsible for the choral music program. He holds a master’s degree in music from Yale University School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music, and earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from University of Toronto.
An advocate for new music, Mark has given premieres and Canadian premieres by many composers including Barbara Assiginaak, John Burge, Timothy Corlis, Jonathan Dove, Reena Esmail, Stephanie Marn, Robinson McClellan, Tawnie Olson, and James Whitbourn.
Concert highlights include performances of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, Arvo Pärt’s Credo and Passio, Richard Einhorn’s moving soundtrack, Voices of Light, as an accompaniment to the silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc, and the Canadian premiere of Craig Hella Johnson’s oratorio Considering Matthew Shepard.
A recipient of many awards, Mark was named the E. Stanley Sedar Scholar at Yale University and is a recipient of the Elmer Iseler National Graduate Fellowship in Choral Conducting from the University of Toronto. In 2016, Mark received the Leslie Bell Prize for Choral Conducting from the Ontario Arts Council and a National Choral Award (Outstanding Dissertation) from
Choral Canada.
Mark’s research interests include the study of contemporary choral literature from the Baltic states, and in particular, the music of Arvo Pärt and Veljo Tormis. Mark was an invited lecturer at the Arvo Pärt Project’s Sounding the Sacred conference in New York City in May 2017. He is published in Circuit Musiques Contemporaines, The Research Memorandum Series of Chorus America, and Principles of Music Composing of the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre.