Recipient of the Women’s Art Associate of Canada – Luella McCleary Award, the Gabriella Dory Prize in Music, and the Hamilton Black History Association’s John C Holland Award for Youth Achievement, Canadian violinist, TANYA CHARLES, has captivated audiences with her passion, energy, flair and finesse. Her performances have been described as “intense and exciting” (The WholeNote Magazine) and “colourful and bold” (Musical Toronto). She has performed in venues across Canada, the USA and the Caribbean as a soloist, chamber- and orchestral-musician.

 

Tanya received a Bachelor of Music in Performance from the University of Toronto, an Artist Diploma in Orchestral Performance from the Glenn Gould School at the Royal Conservatory of Music and is an alumnus of the National Academy Orchestra of Canada. Currently, she is the Principal Second Violin with the Toronto Mozart Players, performs with Sinfonia Toronto, and is the second violinist of the Odin String Quartet. Tanya is a dedicated educator and an in-demand string adjudicator and string clinician in the Ontario region. As a Sessional Lecturer at the University of the Toronto, Tanya provides course instruction on violin pedagogy to undergraduate students of the Bachelor of Music in Education degree. Additionally, Tanya is on faculty at two music schools, that service the youth-in-need from high-priority areas of the City of Toronto: The Regent Park School of Music and Axis Music. In the Caribbean, for over ten years, Tanya has been instrumental in providing assistance with the implementation of string-education training in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Through information sessions and providing masterclasses, she hopes to help train and inspire the upcoming generation of new string players on the island.

 

In Mexico, Tanya has participated as a featured artist with the Scotiabank Northern Lights Music Festival, in Ajijic, Jalisco, for the 2015 season. In conjunction with this, she had the pleasure of providing private lessons, masterclasses, and information sessions, in both English and Spanish, to the young string students, parents and teachers of the Centro Regional de Estudios Musicales program. Outside of the classical genre, Tanya enjoys improvising and performing as the lead violinist with Toronto-based mariachi band, Viva Mexico Mariachi, and has recorded and performed alongside many mainstream artists such as Shad, K-Os, the Transiberian Orchestra and Stevie Wonder.