Magdalena von Eccher is recognized as one of Canada’s finest musicians. Her performances as solo pianist, with orchestra, collaborating with singers, and in chamber music are earning the highest praise from fellow musicians and are loved by audiences. Magdalena’s musical communication is always personal, poetic, and of the highest artistic calibre. Along with her performing career she is sought after as an engaging and skilled teacher and adjudicator, having been on faculty at the University of Lethbridge Department of Music and at McGill University’s Schulich School of Music. She is now based in Charlottetown, PEI as Assistant Professor of Piano at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Her studies were completed at the University of Lethbridge (awarded the Faculty of Fine Arts Gold Medal), the University of British Columbia, and McGill University with distinguished Canadian pianists Glen Montgomery, Jane Coop, and Stéphane Lemelin. Her doctoral research, supported by the prestigious Joseph-Armand Bombardier Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, focused upon the late Piano Sonatas of Viktor Ullmann. Having an affinity for vocal repertoire, Magdalena has studied with esteemed collaborative artists Michael McMahon (McGill University) and Rena Sharon (UBC). Participation in summer programs at Orford, Vienna, Salzburg, as well as a residency at the Banff Centre were generously supported through scholarships from her respective universities, the Strauss Foundation, and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
Magdalena’s performing career has taken her from Vienna and Salzburg to Toronto and Montréal. Recent engagements have included numerous appearances in her new surroundings in Atlantic Canada as well as performances at McGill’s Musical Chairs Chamber Music Festival with clarinetist, James Campbell and violist, Kim Kashkashian, the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto with soprano, Anna-Sophie Neher, concerto performances with the Lethbridge Symphony Orchestra, the Rocky Mountain Symphony Orchestra, and chamber performances with members of the PEI Symphony Orchestra. Since 2007, Magdalena has enjoyed invitations to the Festival of the Sound in solo performances as well as in collaboration with musicians such as Denis Brott, Cameron Crozman, Marion Newman, James Somerville, and visual artist, Alan Stein.
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