FAWN Team
Amanda Smith
FOUNDING ARTISTIC DIRECTOR & RESIDENT STAGE DIRECTOR
Amanda Smith is a Toronto-based opera stage director and Founding Artistic Director of FAWN Chamber Creative. With FAWN, she commissions and produces new operas, and presents interdisciplinary concerts that correlate new classical music with other contemporary art forms. Recently with FAWN, Amanda directed two new operas by Canadian composers: a fully produced world-premiere of l’homme et le ciel by Adam Scime and a semi-staged presentation of The Harvester by Aaron Gervais. In February 2017, Amanda led FAWN’s devised opera workshop with three Canadian composers, librettist David Brock, dancer Jennifer Nichols and singer Jonathan MacArthur.
Described as a “visionary” by Musical Toronto, Amanda finds excitement in exploring the potential of audience experience through alternative and immersive musical events, be it staged concerts or opera. Amanda’s repertoire interests span from Early Music to the very new, and everything in between. Regardless of the era, her work is created to impact a young, eclectic audience. Amanda has shown this in her work with Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra’s new concert series, Haus Musik, Opera Lyra Ottawa’s Nuit Blanche performance of Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot by Peter-Maxwell Davies, Opera Laurier’s 2015 and 2016 scene productions, as well as the UofT New Music Festival performances of Ghost of Gunby Hallby Gabreil Prokofiev and The Killing Flower by Salvatore Sciarrino.
Amanda has an Opera Diploma in directing from the University of Toronto and previously graduated from Wilfrid Laurier University, where she studied voice and directing.
amandasmithopera.com
Adam Scime
MUSIC DIRECTOR & RESIDENT COMPOSER
As a young composer and performer living in Toronto, Adam Scime has been praised as “a fantastic success” (CBC) and “Astounding, the musical result was remarkable” (icareifyoulisten.com). Adam is interested in how he can augment our perception of sound through motion in music. The musical goal and expressive effect serves to elucidate how music can produce artfully ordered conceptual spaces in the minds of the listeners. His work has received many awards including the 2015 CMC Toronto Emerging Composer Award, The Socan Young Composer Competition, The Karen Keiser Prize in Canadian Music, and The Esprit Orchestra Young Composer Competition. Recently his piece Liminal Pathways was toured across nine Canadian cities with Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal as part of their 2016 Generation Project.
His music has been commissioned and performed by many renowned ensembles and soloists including Nouvelle Ensemble Moderne, The National Arts Centre Orchestra, The Esprit Orchestra, The Gryphon Trio, New Music Concerts, Soundstreams, and l’Orchestre de la Francophonie among others. Adam has been selected for numerous composer workshops including Domaine Forget, The Soundstreams Emerging Composer Workshop, The National Arts Centre composer training program, The Canadian Contemporary Music Workshop and the Chrysalis Workshop with the Continuum Contemporary Ensemble. Recently, Adam’s piece Broken Images was toured across China to various celebrated new music festivals. Future projects include commissions from Array Music and the The Esprit Orchestra among others. Adam is currently based in Toronto where he is finishing his Doctorate in composition at UofT and is performing regularly as a double bassist.
adamscime.com
Collective Members
