2024 Adjudicators

Senior/Intermediate Piano - Dale Wheeler

After teaching piano and various courses at the post-secondary level for over thirty years Dale Wheeler is now enjoying life as an independent musician. Living in Red Deer, Alberta he teaches part-time at Burman University and maintains a small private studio.

He holds the doctorate in piano performance and pedagogy from the University of Oklahoma where his dissertation focused on the Roman-period works of Franz Liszt. He also holds degrees and diplomas from the University of Saskatchewan and Trinity College of Music, London.

He is a long-standing member of The Royal Conservatory of Music College of Examiners and serves as a contract specialist for the Adjudicator Certification Program. Dr. Wheeler has appeared as a recitalist, accompanist, adjudicator, and lecturer from coast to coast in Canada and throughout the U.S. He has presented at major conferences throughout North America and Europe, the most recent being the International Society for Music Education in Baku, Azerbaijan. His performing interests range from the core classics to out-of-the-way and new repertoire. He presented an all-Liszt recital for the Liszt Bicentenary and more recently performed several of the Bach multiple keyboard concerti along with collaborating in the premiere of a work for three pianos. Another program included works that focused on birds – Liszt, Messiaen, Ravel, Balakirev, Rameau, Beach, and Bernstein.

Dr. Wheeler particularly enjoys working with teachers young and old who are developing their own playing and pedagogical skills. For a number of years Dale was a regular columnist for Clavier magazine and has had articles published in the CFMTA Journal, American Music Teacher, and The Journal of the American Liszt Society. He has recently served as president of both the Red Deer Symphony Orchestra and the Alberta Piano Teachers Association. In 2012 Dr. Wheeler received the Mayor’s Recognition Award for his contribution to the fine and performing arts. When not making music, his interests include water and snow skiing, classic cars, touring on his Harley motorcycle, and collecting vintage piano recordings.

Vocal - Mireille Rijavec

Mireille has a Master of Music in Vocal Performance from the University of British Columbia. She was Music Faculty at the University of Alberta’s Campus Saint-Jean from 1999 to 2012 and was on staff at Concordia University of Edmonton from 2006 to 2016 as a voice instructor, Manager and Program Coordinator of Concordia's School of Music. Mireille was a member of Edmonton's professional choir Pro Coro Canada for many years and from 2016 to 2019, their Executive Director. In June of 2018, she was elected to the Edmonton Arts Council. Mireille continues to act as a consultant for not-for-profit organizations.

Mireille is the vocal pedagogue and alto vocal coach for the Edmonton Metropolitan Chorus and has conducted the Women of Edmonton Metropolitan Chorus in 2023 and will again in February 2024. She teaches voice privately and works with students of all levels, from children to adults and stresses the importance of being able to read music, healthy vocal technique grounded in physiology, and ultimately the joy of communicating through song. Mireille's students are active singers in the community, and many have continued their vocal studies in classical voice and musical theatre in post-secondary institutions across Canada and the United States. Mireille is a member of the CMFAA (Canadian Music Festival Adjudicators Association), ARMTA (Alberta Registered Music Teachers Association), NATS (National Association of Teacher of Singing) and is an Affiliate Member of the Association for Body Mapping Educators.

Musical Theatre/Speech - Crystal Hanson

Crystal holds a Masters in Vocal Pedagogy through the University of Wales, Trinity St. David. In addition to a Bachelor of Music Degree in Voice Performance.  

She teaches private vocal out of her home studio in St. Albert. She is certified in all 3 levels in CCM (Contemporary Commercial Music), Somatic Voicework, the LoVetri Method ®, through Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia. She also completed Levels 1 and 2 of the One Voice Program in New York under the tutelage of Dr. Joan Melton.

Crystal has been teaching musical theatre at the Foote Theatre School, Citadel Theatre in Edmonton for over 20 years.  She has toured throughout Western Canada in various musical productions and one production based out of Prague, Czech Republic.  She toured with the Alberta Opera for 4 seasons and played a large role in creating and directing the Alberta Opera’s Artist in Residency Program. 

A freelance vocal coach, she is proud to have worked on many musical productions with Eastglen High School, Austin O’Brien High School, and Avalon Junior High School in Edmonton.

A busy entertainer, Crystal is a member of the local Edmonton tribute and show band ‘Crystal Blue & the Persuasions’ and ‘Dash Rip Rock’.

Most recently, Crystal has been busy with the launch of Voice Body Works, which offers somatic voice work and coaching to singers, actors, and voice professionals.

Instruments and Music Composition - Charles Stolte

Once described by Classical Music magazine as a musician of “dazzling commitment and versatility,” Charles Stolte, maintains a richly varied career as a saxophonist, composer, and teacher. Reviews long ago in the Chicago Tribune lauded him as a “talented performer with glossy technique and bluesy charm,” and he still enjoys frequent support from Canadian provincial and national governments for his composition projects and performance tours. CBC radio used to broadcast his performances and compositions back when they thought it was important to support Canadian classical musicians, but he and his music still enjoy performances across North America, in Europe and Asia.

Charles and his musical partners have instigated the creation of more than twenty new works and world premieres, and he can be heard on a variety of recordings as a saxophone soloist, in the Stolte/Segger Duo with pianist Joachim Segger, with the Edmonton Saxophone Quartet and as a former member of Ensemble Mujirushi, Edmonton’s “New Music Supergroup” (Edmonton Journal). Dr. Stolte is Chair of Music and Professor of Saxophone, Musicology and Composition at The King's University in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He is a long-standing Instructor of Saxophone at Macewan University Conservatory of Music and MusiCamp Alberta and is an Associate Composer, and former Regional Chair, of the Canadian Music Centre.

He has served on the faculties of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Roosevelt University in Chicago, University of Alberta in Edmonton and at its Augustana campus. His teachers include William H. Street,

M. William Karlins, Malcolm Forsyth, and Howard Bashaw. He holds a Doctor of Music degree in Saxophone Performance from Northwestern University, where he was the first Canadian accepted to the doctoral program in saxophone performance with the late renowned saxophonist, Frederick L. Hemke. He enjoys living in Edmonton, Alberta where the season is short, but the golf is cheap.

Fiddling - 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.