2025 Festival Adjudicators
Caron Allen – Strings
Caron graduated from Queen’s University School of Music as a double major in cello and flute. After receiving her Bachelor of Music she traveled to Vienna and performed in the Kursalon orchestra as a flautist, after which she relocated to Kingston, Ontario and earned her Bachelor of Education. She embarked on a teaching career, founding a string program there for 8 years, while playing in the Kingston Symphony Orchestra.
Caron continues to perform as a professional freelance cellist in orchestras across Ontario and in 2011 she embarked on a Yangtze Triangle tour of China as a cellist with Ontario Festival Symphony Orchestra. She also continues to conduct two string youth orchestras: Philharmonia and Sinfonia, under the umbrella of the Oakville Symphony Youth Orchestra. This is her 17th year. In 2012, the OSYO traveled to Los Angeles to perform in the West Coast Youth Orchestra Festival held at Disney Hall and this year has taken the Orchestra to the gold level at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
Her orchestras, concert bands and jazz bands have earned gold standings at both the Provincial and National levels over the span of her teaching career. In addition to teaching flute and cello in her studio, Caron is sought after as a clinician and adjudicator for regional and national festivals across Canada.
Dr. Jana Starling – Instrumental
Canadian clarinetist Jana Starling is a nationally and internationally active performer and teacher. She has performed with the Arizona Opera Company, the Paraguayan National Symphony, and utility clarinet with the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra and ProMusica Chamber Orchestra. She has been programmed numerous times at the International Clarinet Association’s ClarinetFest®, given recitals and masterclasses at the Belgian Clarinet Academy, Sichuan Conservatory of Music in China, and has been a guest artist and adjudicator at various festivals in the United States and Canada. She also teaches frequently at the International Music Camp (Peace Gardens, CAN / USA), the Interprovincial Music Camp (ON), and the co-founder of the Lift Clarinet Academy, an innovative summer program in Colorado.
Starling has recorded and commissioned new music by composers such as Eric Mandat, William O. Smith, James David, and Roshanne Etezady. Her debut CD Inflexion earned a 2007 East Coast Music Award nomination for “Classical Recording of the Year” and her second solo CD Mythos (PotenzaMusic, 2011) contains numerous premiere recording by composers such as Theresa Martin, Dana Wilson and Mark Schultz. She has been involved in numerous collaborative recordings and currently tours and commissions works with the clarinet trio, Ironwood Trio, playing E♭ clarinet. The Clarinet magazine (Mar. 2008) CD review hails Starling as “a wonderful player… musically sensitive… you will not be disappointed!”
She is an Associate Professor in the Don Wright Faculty of Music at Western University (Ontario, Canada) teaching undergraduate and graduate students. She previously held positions at Arizona State University (US), Mount Allison University (CAN) and visiting professor at Brandon University, (CAN). Starling received her BMus in music education from Brandon University (CAN, 1995) and her MMus and DMA in clarinet performance from Arizona State University (US, 1997 & 2005). Her teachers have been Ron Goddard, Connie Gitlin and Robert Spring. Starling is a Buffet-Crampon and Gonzalez Reed artist.
Sandra Mogensen – Piano
Pianist Sandra Mogensen has extensive pedagogical experience, both as a piano teacher and a coach for singers. A former senior member of the Royal Conservatory of Music Board of Examiners, Sandra has also worked as an examiner for Canadian National Conservatory of Music and Conservatory Canada. She enjoys adjudicating students of all ages and levels as away to support and encourage personal and musical development, while sharing her love for music.
As a performer, pianist Sandra Mogensen is equally at home in two worlds: performing as a solo pianist and co-performing with singers in recital. She has played in concert in both capacities in Canada, the United States, and throughout Europe.
In early 2019, Ms. Mogensen’s focus turned to the music of female composers. Her first recording in the series of albums known as en pleine lumière was released in December 2019, spotlighting composers born in mid-1800s. This series of recordings is of solo piano music by undeservedly overlooked women who composed, with each album planned to focus on a generation of composers.
She has also co-founded a project called ‘Piano Music She Wrote”, in which thousands of piano pieces composed by women have been catalogued in an online directory. The “Piano Music She Wrote’” YouTube channel features Sandra’s and colleague Erica Sipes’ performances of some of this music, with a repertoire of several hundred pieces. Sandra has also released two elementary level “Piano Music She Wrote” anthologies for piano students, published by Debra Wanless.
Sandra’s first solo recording, Piano Music of Edvard Grieg, recorded in December 2006, was warmly received and praised. Since then, Sandra has become known as a specialist in Grieg’s music, having released four recordings of the great Norwegian’s music so far.
Sandra is excited to be adjudicating in Timmins once again.
sandramogensen.com pianomusicshewrote.com
Danielle MacMillan – Vocal
Canadian-Italian Mezzo Soprano, Danielle MacMillan was a member of the Canadian Opera Company’s Ensemble Studio and Palm Beach Opera’s Benenson Young Artist Program where she performed and covered the roles in: Britten’s Peter Grimes; Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte, (COC); Carmen, Bizet; Ariadne auf Naxos, Strauss; Madama Butterfly, Puccini; Rigoletto, Verdi; Pirates of Penzance, Gilbert and Sullivan; Le nozze di Figaro, Mozart; Don Giovanni, Mozart (PBO). Ms. MacMillan holds a BFA, with honours, from York University, and ADV from The Glenn Gould School.
Other credits include: La Calisto, Cavalli; The Magic Flute, Mozart; Le docteur Miracle, Bizet (GGS); La clemenza di Tito, Mozart (COSI); Le nozze di Figaro, Mozart; Faust, Gounod (HOS); Vivier’s Kopernikus (Against the Grain Theatre’s Dora Award winning production). Awards include: IRCPA Maureen Forrester Scholarship, St. Andrews Arts Council Aria Competition, Regional Finalist prize winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Clifford Poole Vocal Competition (CBSO), and the Rumbold Vocal Prize (2023). Concert work includes: Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with the NYCO; NAC’s chamber festival; and eleven seasons with the Toronto Classical Singers.
Ms. MacMillan made her Opera Atelier debut in October 2020, in their filmed production of “Something Rich & Strange” and returned in 2022 with a live audience in their production of “All is Love.” Her most recent debut was with Opera Nashville as Wellgunde in Das Rheingold; roles in Dido and Aeneas, Purcell, (Opera Atelier); and Dorabella, Così fan tutte, Opera Manitoba (2023). Ms. MacMillan will be returning to Opera Atelier in their production of “All is Love” and will launch her very first album, titled “Songs of Hope,” with the Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra (January 2025). The remainder of the 2024 / 2025 season will include Beethoven’s 9th with the Cathedral Bluffs Symphony Orchestra, a main stage debut with Edmonton Opera, a return to Opera Atelier in “David and Jonathan,” Verdi’s Requiem with the Kindred Spirits Orchestra and a Chicago tour of The Magic Flute with Opera Atelier (2025).
In addition to her active performance career, Ms. MacMillan has been teaching voice lessons to students of all ages and skill levels for over ten years and she continues to play and sing at corporate events, religious services and ceremonies.