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Janna Olson and Leanne Regehr have been friends, collaborators and teaching colleagues since they met at the University of Alberta more than two decades ago. Between the two of them, they have studied and performed in Lethbridge, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Idaho, Chicago, Louisiana, Michigan, Austria, Germany, and the UK. They are passionate about the joys of collaborating with each other as piano duet and duo partners, and with singers and instrumentalists alike. As colleagues at the King’s University in Edmonton, they aim to inspire students to explore piano pedagogy and to develop their artistry at the piano. With this new program of four-hand piano music, Janna and Leanne join fellow pianists around the world who are expanding the canon of repertoire to include composers whose voices have been silenced or simply not yet heard.
Leanne Regehr is a versatile and sensitive pianist who is widely recognized for her intuitive ability to collaborate with other musicians across an extensive range of repertoire. She is the featured soloist in a live recording of Victor Davies' Mennonite Piano Concerto with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, and is currently based in Edmonton where she serves on the faculties of the University of Alberta and The King’s University.
Leanne’s reputation in opera has grown through engagements as a répétiteur with Shreveport Opera, Mercury Opera, and Edmonton Opera. Her dedication to the development of young singers has been shown through her work as a faculty member with Opera NUOVA, as a Coaching Fellow at the Aspen Music Festival and most recently with the Ukrainian Art Song Project’s Summer Institute in Toronto. She is a keyboardist with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, and has performed with the Chamber Orchestra of Edmonton, Pro Coro Canada, Da Camera Singers, Luminous Voices,, the Okanagan Symphony Orchestra, and the Academy Concert Series in Toronto.
Leanne completed her Doctor of Music in Piano Performance at Northwestern University and explored further studies at the Banff School of Fine Arts, the Universitat Mozarteum in Salzburg and the Aspen Music Festival. She has enjoyed playing the masterworks of the choral repertoire during her twenty seasons as accompanist with the Richard Eaton Singers, and freelances as a soloist, vocal coach, recital partner, and adjudicator.
Originally from Three Hills, Alberta, Janna Olson holds degrees in church music, piano performance and piano pedagogy. Performing, adjudicating, and giving workshops have provided diverse opportunities for her to share her love of music in Canada, the United States and Europe. Janna currently resides in Edmonton teaching privately and as a sessional instructor at The King’s University. She is active as an examiner and clinician while maintaining a thriving private piano studio which includes students from ages 5-70+ years old. She is on the faculty of the Gordon Institute for Music Learning and is passionate about connecting piano pedagogy with research on how the musical mind works. She enjoys playing chamber music and performs piano duet and duo repertoire. An outdoors enthusiast, Janna spends time hiking, skiing and most recently learning to play disc golf.
Concert Sponsor: Dr. Alan Murdock