About

Alice B. Dearden

Composer and Music Educator

I am a Toronto-based music educator, choir director, and composer who has contributed songs and elementary piano pieces to the Music for Young Children curriculum.

My choral works have been performed by Musicata – Hamilton’s Voices (formerly the John Laing Singers) and le Choeur gai d’Ottawa Gay Men’s Chorus (commissioned work), The Fountains of the Sun Choir, Acquired Taste (Canada’s only choir for professional instrumentalists), and the Arizona Girls Chorus, as well as several church choirs. My choral requiem, Crux, was premiered by the John Laing Singers in May 2016, and my cantata Seven Words from the Cross was performed at Knox Presbyterian Church in Toronto in 2017. My first opera, Victoria, or Tony Gets Schooled, has received a semi-staged reading.

I also write art songs, music for strings, and elementary to advanced piano pieces. My composition for piano, Thistle Flower, won the CFMTA 2021 Call for Compositions.

Currently, I teach Music for Young Children classes and give private piano lessons; I also direct the Syme Senior Choir, and occasionally lead worship at my church.