Elise Bradley, now in her ninth season as Artistic Director of the Toronto Children’s Chorus in Toronto, Canada, is an award-winning and internationally respected conductor, adjudicator and clinician. A recipient of New Zealand’s Regional and National Excellence in Teaching Awards for Secondary Teaching, Ms. Bradley has dedicated her career to the education of children and the art of choral music. Her long tenure at Westlake Girls’ High School in Auckland brought international honours to her Key Cygnetures choir, including the City of Vienna prize at the Internationales Jugendmusikfest and the Award of the City of Vienna at the Summa Cum Laude International Youth Music Festival. Ms. Bradley also served for many years as Director of the New Zealand Secondary Students’ Choir, which won awards at the International Kathaumixw in Powell River, Canada, was named Champion of the Youth Choir section at the World Choral Games in Xiamen, China, and also won the World Choir Award at the Hong Kong International Youth and Children’s Choirs Competition.
Since moving to Canada in 2007, Ms. Bradley has received many invitations to work with choirs and to present at conferences around the world, most recently in Australia, Colombia, the United States, Korea, China and in a number of cities across Canada. During this season, she will have been a guest clinician at the IFCM 1st Asia Pacific World Choral Expo in Macau, the Grande Prairie Boys’ Choir, and at the University of Montana. She has taken the Toronto Children’s Chorus Chamber Choir on three national tours, to the National Choral Conference, Ottawa (2012), with the Fujii Percussion Ensemble to Montreal and Ottawa, (2013), and to the National Choral Conference Halifax, (2014), and also on five international tours – to Austria, the Czech Republic and Germany (2009), Brazil and Argentina (2011), Sweden (2012), South Africa (2013) and Russia, the Baltics and Poland (2015). In 2016, the choir has been invited to perform in Boston, in Carnegie Hall, New York City, and in Nassau, Bahamas at the 8th American Cantat. Ms. Bradley has also collaborated in performance with such prominent figures as Krzysztof Penderecki, Christopher Plummer, Gordon Pinsent, Charles Dutoit, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Peter Oundjian, Sir David Willcocks and Sir Andrew Davis. During the choir’s 2015-2016 season, Music of the Spheres, Ms. Bradley and the Toronto Children’s Chorus are honoured to perform with a galaxy of renowned Canadian guest artists, including NEXUS percussion ensemble, baritones James Westman and Russell Braun, and mezzo-soprano and TCC Alumna Krisztina Szabó.
Her first CD with the Chorus, Sounzscapes: From Our Lands – a juxtaposition of contemporary and First Nations music from Canada and New Zealand – was recently named ‘Outstanding Choral Recording’ by Choral Canada.