Isabel Bernaus, Music Director

"I really believe that everybody should have access to music," says Isabel Bernaus, the accomplished conductor of the Jubilate Singers since 2001. Her experience as a music educator ranges widely, from teaching people who have never sung ("not even in the shower") to experienced vocalists like the Jubilate Singers.

Isabel grew up in a big family in Catalonia (Spain), near Barcelona. When she was six, her father, a cabinet maker, was given an 1875 player piano as partial payment from one of his clients. Isabel, the only one in her family to show interest in the instrument, began picking out tunes by ear and improvising right away, but had to wait until she was eight to go to the Conservatory of Music (those were the rules). "I received really good technical training but I don't think they transmitted any passion for music," she says about her long years at the traditional Conservatory. What has driven her since then is the desire to make learning music a better experience for others than the rigid instruction she had. She's been known to tell us, as we're learning a lullaby, to "rock the baby, don't wake it." At the same time, she always strives for musical excellence and improved ear training: as one of the ways to achieve that during rehearsal, she often points her left hand quickly to her ear in mid-song, shaking her head slightly, an instant indicator to us that notes need tuning.

Isabel's music studies after 1987 led her to France, where she earned a teaching diploma in the Willems method of music education, which emphasizes ear training, solfege and movement. A book that she read by Jean-Paul Despins, a Quebecois teacher, on the neuro-pedagogy of music was largely responsible for her move in 1992 to Laval University in Quebec City, where she got her master's degree in music education. She has studied piano with Angel Soler and conducting with Manel Cabero and Dr. James Jordan of Westminster College, Rider University.

She speaks Catalan, Spanish, French, and English and sings in many more languages. In the summer of 1999, she and her partner moved to Toronto, where she immediately began leading Common Thread: Community Chorus of Toronto, a 70-voice non-audition community choir that had just been formed. She also founded and directed the University Settlement Choir, a smaller non-audition group, for four years before handing over the reins in 2002 to a new director. Isabel teaches in the music theatre program at Sheridan College and has participated in several Ontario choral events as guest conductor.

She has composed and directed for theatre at Humber College and conducted at several Festivals. She is active directing CAMMAC workshops and readings, and for several summers at the Haliburton School for the Arts she has been teaching the Creative Choral Music course (a summer workshop that involves seven hours of intensive instruction each day for one week). She was awarded an honourable mention at the 2006 Leslie Bell Prize for Choral Conducting granted by the Ontario Arts Council.

- Susan Lawrence