LUMINA - Dungan, Oger, Breton, Blanchet
Performing Claude Bolling's
Suite for Flute and Jazz Trio
Pianist Derek Oger was born and raised in Thunder Bay. Derek maintains a large private teaching studio, and divides his time between performing and teaching. He has an HBMusic degree from Lakehead University (1998), and his primary teachers have included Heather Morrison, Peter Longworth, and Helmut Brauss. Derek currently serves on the Ontario
Registered Music Teacher’s Association Provincial Council, and the Board of the New Music North Concert Series. He has been recorded on a CD released by New Music North, part of which was broadcast nationwide on CBC Radio Two’s The Signal. He is accompanist and business manager to the Rafiki Youth Choir, which is a joint venture he shares with his wife
Laurel, who conducts the Choir. In addition to his work as a pianist, Derek also spends time traveling across Canada as a Music Festival Adjudicator and Workshop Clinician. He is a member of Conservatory Canada’s Board of Examiners, a featured Clinician for the Ontario Registered Music Teacher’s Association, and is a member of the Canadian Music Festival Adjudicator’s Association. Derek has been recently named Director of Programs for Conservatory Canada, where he will be developing summer music programs for youth, teachers and parents.
Jean-François Breton has been the Principal Timpanist of the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra since April 2006. He is also the percussion instructor at Lakehead University. Jean-François made his percussion debut in Québec city and attained his Bachelors of Music from the Université de Sherbrooke. He then pursued his studies at Indiana University where he
earned a Masters in Percussion Performance under the tutelage of Anthony J. Cirone, Gerald Carlyss, and Craig Hetrick. Other prominent teachers include Mario Boivin, Steve Houghton, Tom Freer, William Linwood, Jean- Normand Yadeluca, Marc-André Lalonde, and Jauvon Gilliam. In 2005, Jean-François won both the second prize in the OSM Standard Life Concerto Competition and a full scholarship to the Banff Centre for the Arts. He was one of the five finalists in 2009 at the same competition. Earlier in 2003, he played solo with the Orchestre Symphonique des Jeunes de Sherbrooke and the Indiana University Symphonic Band. As a member of the Montréal-based Fusion Quartet, Jean-François recorded Bartok's Sonata for Two Piano and Two Percussion for CBC Radio in 2004. Jean-Francois is now a frequent performer in the LUMINA and New Music North Series. He also has performed solo twice with the TBSO in the last year. He will also perform Mirage? for solo vibraphone and gongs with the TBSO in a Classical Plus concert in March 2011.