2024 Adjudicators
Senior/Intermediate Piano - Helve Sastok
Helve Sastok is a creative and innovative published and performed composer, educator, adjudicator and multi-instrumentalist. Her many musical interests and abilities have resulted in a diverse career. She has used her varied skills in her positions as teacher, church music director, conductor, piano soloist and accompanist, pipe organist, violinist and guitarist.
As an adjudicator, Helve is comfortable working with all levels of students. She has a positive and energetic adjudication style that draws in the participant as well as the audience. She is able to quickly solve musical problems. She is able to make all ages of students feel comfortable and experience the joy of music. Her own passion for music is evident in her lively and humorous manner in dealing with students.
Helve’s wholistic style of teaching has resulted in her students achieving First Class Honours (with Distinction) in piano examinations with the Royal Conservatory of Music (RCM). Her students have often placed first and won scholarships at local and provincial level competitions. Helve has also been involved as a composer and educator with The Artist in Schools Residency Program throughout Alberta. She has been an Artist with the Learning Through The Arts program through the RCM. Workshops given in various centres have been well received.
Helve has a Master of Music degree in composition and a Bachelor of Music degree (with Distinction) in composition/performance from the University of Alberta. As well, she has earned two piano performance diplomas. By attending master classes and international seminars, she demonstrates her dedication to life long learning. She is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre, a member of the Canadian League of Composers, as well as the Alberta Registered Music Teachers Association and the Alberta Piano Teachers Association. Helve's compositions have been performed across Canada and in Europe. Many of her compositions have been released on CD.
For further information, please visit her website at helvesastok.wixsite.com/home
Junior Piano - Miriam Mahood
Miriam Mahood is a RCM Examiner who exams extensively throughout Canada & the USA. Since Covid she has remotely examined 1000 candidates from Shanghai, Hawai, Texas, Georgia, California, New York, Rhode Island, Florida, Washington, Colorado, New Mexico, Michigan, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Arizona, Connecticut, Maryland, & Illinois, in addition to those in Canada.
Ms. Mahood has adjudicated regularly for the Alberta, Saskatchewan, & British Columbia Music Festival Associations, her most recent festivals being Ft. McMurray, Red Deer, Grande Prairie, Whitecourt, Wetaskiwin, & Vermilion.
Ms. Mahood is a graduate of the Mozarteum, Salzburg, Austria (Konzertdiplom), Universities of Saskatchewan & Alberta (B Mus. & M Mus.) & holds the ARCT from the Royal Conservatory of Music, & the Associate & Licentiate from the Western Board of Music.
She has been employed by such institutions as Alberta College, The Banff Centre, Universities of Alberta & Manitoba, Western Board of Music, Winnipeg Bible College, & has served as Music Director, Organist, & Choir Director in various Churches, most recently at St. Georges Anglican.
For many years she was Scholarship Chair, & served on the Ball Committee, of the Johann Strauss Foundation. Ms. Mahood runs a successful Piano Studio dedicated to student success. Her hobbies are hiking, languages, ballroom, & travel.
Vocal - Tine Hartt
Calgary based jazz vocalist Tina Hartt is a sought-after adjudicator and performer. Tina has enjoyed traveling from Fort McMurray to Lethbridge, including many cities in between, adjudicating Classical & Contemporary Voice in music festivals all over Alberta.
An accomplished classical singer, who has enjoyed performing sacred, rock and operatic repertoire, she now performs mainly in the jazz style. In 2023, she released her 2nd album “Absence of You” which was nominated for Jazz Recording of the Year at the 2023 Jazz YYC Awards and reached #1 on the Specialty Charts for Jazz with CFBX in May 2023.
Tina specializes in bilingual jazz interpretations and adapting French chansons with jazz
harmonies and Latin rhythms. Her songs continue to be played on CBC – Radio Canada but have also received positive attention in Europe.
She is looking forward to meeting tomorrow’s performers and passing on any helpful knowledge to help them on their individual musical journeys.
Strings - Jarred Albright
Jarred Albright is a professional fiddle, mandolin, guitar, and banjo player based in Edmonton, Alberta. He lives and breathes all things music; when he is not practicing or performing, he is teaching, recording, producing, writing, or composing.
Jarred has played the violin since he was seven years old, and music has been his focus ever since. He discovered the joys of fiddle style very early on and spent his underage years with the Calgary Fiddlers performing over a hundred times a year before entering post-secondary to pursue jazz performance at Grant MacEwan University. Since then, he has endeavoured to teach himself to sing and play mandolin, guitar, and banjo. Music has taken him around the world including the United States, South Korea, England, Scotland, and Ireland.
In 2012 he and Ben Plotnick were awarded the 10k20 grant from Rawlco radio and their bluegrass duo recorded the self-titled CD Rye & Fairy Tales, to much acclaim. He has spent much of his time since then in Toronto but has returned to his home province of Alberta and currently resides in Edmonton.
These days Jarred can be found performing with many diverse local acts as a sideman and has also found new excitement in recording, producing, and videography. He happily spends his days practicing, performing, puttering about the recording studio, and sharing his love of music with his many students.
Musical Theatre/Speech - Amanda Brunk
Amanda Brunk (BacMusPerf, MA/Community Music) is a PAVA-Recognized Vocologist and Designated Linklater Teacher specializing in contemporary voice technique and voice habilitation. Amanda teaches voice for singers at Wilfrid Laurier University and periodically coaches actors at Sheridan College/University of Toronto. She also maintains a successful private studio in Waterloo, Ontario.
Her voice students have gone on to perform throughout Canada, on North American tours and in Broadway shows. As conductor of the Grand Philharmonic Youth Choir for eight years, Amanda led the choir to win competitions nationally and internationally, and to perform with grammy-winning recording artists and rock groups.
Amanda is the Founder and Artistic Director of The Singer's Theatre, a summer music theatre training program that attracts singers from across North America since 2002, and has served as vocal director for various cruise lines. She is the proud recipient of two Professional Development Grants from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Amanda adjudicates regularly for classical, choral, pop and music theatre categories. from coast to coast. She is vice-president of the Ontario chapter of the National Association of Teachers of Singing and is a published author for the NATS Journal of Singing and VASTA Voice and Speech Review.
Guitar - Trevor Sanders
Since 2000, Trevor Sanders has been an active teacher, adjudicator and performer in the Edmonton area and throughout Alberta. He began teaching, and is currently on faculty at MacEwan University’s Alberta College Conservatory of Music since 2001, the Augustana Campus of the University of Alberta since 2008, and at Concordia University of Edmonton since 2023.
He is a graduate of the University of Alberta (MMus) and Augustana University College (BA specialized in Music). As an active performer, his appearances as a chamber musician and as a soloist have been heard in numerous concert series and on radio. Trevor has been involved with a number of guitar ensembles, and is a founding member of the University of Alberta guitar quartet and the Edmonton Guitar Trio. He has also performed as a soloist with the Alberta Baroque Orchestra. Trevor currently teaches music theory and guitar for MacEwan Conservatory; music theory, jazz guitar, and classical guitar for the University of Alberta at its Augustana Campus; classical guitar for Concordia University of Edmonton; and guitar (classical, jazz, contemporary) for the Purple Door Music Academy.
Instruments and Music Composition - Craig Johnson
Originally from Winnipeg MB, Craig studied privately with a long list of classical and jazz instructors on his primary instruments (Trumpet & Piano). After high school he attended
The University of Manitoba furthering his studies in the Performing Fine Arts Program.
He went on to study Jazz Arranging, Orchestral Composition, and Writing for Motion Picture and TV earning his General Music Studies degree at The Berklee College of Music in Boston.
Now living in Calgary with over 30 years of teaching and performing experience Craig remains an active clinician, teaching within the Calgary Board of Education and private sector band music programs. He maintains a large private student base and has had a number of students go on to pursue their own musical careers at the professional level.
In 2003 Craig accepted the position of Musical Director for a Calgary based big band association followed by a second offer in 2019 from an additional association. His roles include, directing, writing and arranging a large portion of the band’s repertoire for performance.
In addition to teaching and adjudicating music festivals throughout Alberta, as a band leader he leads his own groups of various sizes and has been commissioned by different organizations and independent artists to write music for their specific recording and or performing projects.
Currently Craig is creating a self-published music company under the name MAXALBY Music Publishing, making available his original works and arrangements for Jazz Ensemble, Concert Band, Orchestra, and various small group ensembles ranging from beginner to advanced to professional levels.
Choral - David Mikuliak