May Ling Kwok
A graduate with distinction of the University of Victoria, May Ling Kwok first studied with Robin Wood at the Victoria Conservatory of Music. She later continued her doctoral studies with the famed Hungarian pianist, György Sebők at Indiana University, where she was awarded the Distinguished Performer’s Certificate. She is very active as a soloist and chamber music performer, piano teacher, and adjudicator.
Concert tours have taken her to the United States, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Mexico, Russia and Europe. She has appeared as soloist with the Victoria Symphony, the Montreal Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico, Moscow Philharmonic, Vladivostok Symphony Orchestra, the Slovakia Radio Orchestra and the Czech National Symphony. Her recordings include concertos and chamber works by Beethoven, Schumann, Mozart, Shostakovich and Prokofiev.
May Ling Kwok is on the faculty of the Victoria Conservatory of Music and the University of Victoria. Many of her students have gone on to successful careers in music and the performing arts.
Ronald Morgan
Dr. Ronald Morgan is an accomplished musician and educator with great passion for music and the piano. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance and Literature, a Master of Music in Piano Performance, and a Master of Arts in Musicology —all from the prestigious Eastman School of Music. His principal teachers include Douglas Humpherys (Eastman) and Patricia Parr (University of Toronto), both distinguished figures in the world of classical piano.
Dr. Morgan’s performance experience spans solo and collaborative recitals in Canada and the U.S., as well as international appearances in Great Britain, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. He brings a wealth of experience to his work as a respected festival and competition adjudicator and senior examiner for the Royal Conservatory of Music. Prior to settling in British Columbia, Dr. Morgan served as Assistant Professor of Piano at the University of Hawaii, where he taught a range of subjects from piano pedagogy to music history.
Recently relocating from Vancouver to Courtenay, B.C., he channels his love of teaching into his private piano studio and online instruction. His students regularly shine in competitions and festivals, earning numerous awards, including provincial and national gold medals from the Royal Conservatory and top honours at the Performing Arts BC Competition and the Canadian Music Competition. With decades of dedication to excellence in piano education, Dr. Morgan continues to inspire, challenge, and elevate students, helping them strive towards their full artistic potential.
Jamie Syer
Jamie was Dean of the Victoria Conservatory of Music until 2012. He was Head of the Conservatory’s Keyboard Department, and also taught at the UVic School of Music. As a lecturer for UVic’s Faculty of Continuing Education, he led two arts-related travel tours to France. He is the founder of the Victoria Conservatory’s Young Artists Collegium program, which offers an enriched curriculum for talented young musicians.
Bruce Vogt
Canadian pianist Bruce Vogt was born in southern Ontario but for the past 44 years has lived and worked in Victoria, BC and taught at the University of Victoria as Professor of Piano. As a soloist, he has appeared regularly in concerts within Canada and he tours yearly in many countries throughout Europe and Asia. His repertoire encompasses music from the sixteenth century to the present. In addition to having a special affinity for the music of Franz Liszt, he has performed on period instruments, and commissioned and premièred a number of new works.
Because he sees teaching and working with young pianists and with piano teachers as an important commitment, he makes himself available as much as possible for master classes, workshops, festival adjudications, and lectures.
In recent years, he has received many invitations in Canada and abroad to indulge another of his passions: improvising accompaniments to great films of the silent era. He has played for and lectured about films by Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Griffith, Murnau and others.
Michelle Fillion
Musicologist and pianist Michelle Fillion is Professor Emerita of Music at the University of Victoria, where she taught the history and performance practices of the classical, romantic, and modern periods until retirement. She also taught for almost two decades at Mills College in Oakland, California, where she was Head of the Music Department, and at McGill and Queen’s Universities.
She is the author of Difficult Rhythm: Music and the Word in E. M. Forster (University of Illinois Press, 2010) and the editor of Gordon Mumma: Cybersonic Arts: Adventures in American New Music (University of Illinois Press, 2015). More recently she served on the Editorial Board of the two-volume Collected Songs of Poldowski (Hildegard Press, 2020 and 2022). Currently she is preparing composer Gordon Mumma’s extensive musical archive for placement at the New York Public Library. She received her PhD in musicology from Cornell University.