Edward Connell is a life-long professional musician with an impressive rainbow of skills and talents. He began training as a concert pianist in his native Edmonton, eventually accumulating a stack of degrees, diplomas and medals. He then embarked on a career as a theatre musician, and along the way, wrote plays and musicals (published and produced), acted, and composed incidental scores to everything from Shakespeare to Torch Song Trilogy.
Simultaneously, he took up a secondary career as an organist, choir director and singer, mastering those skills, and earning more diplomas and prizes, including the coveted FRCCO and the Healey Willan Prize. In 2000, he moved to Toronto to take up the musical leadership of Timothy Eaton Memorial Church.
In 2005, he was appointed pianist to the National Ballet of Canada. He has been lauded for several high-profile performances. These include Chopin’s 24 Preludes at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and across Canada, and piano etudes by Philip Glass in a new ballet by Guillaume Côté, performed here, in Moscow and in St. Petersburg. Most recently, he was on stage (and in costume) playing and conducting the orchestra in the ragtime ballet “Elite Syncopations”. He is currently deeply involved in helping to set the new Karen Kain production of “Swan Lake”.
Since 2002, he has been the artistic director of Forte-Toronto Gay Men’s Chorus. Over 20 years, he has built the chorus into one of Canada’s finest men’s choirs, and is particularly admired for the 200+ custom arrangements that he has made for the group. He continues as a church musician, and for more than a decade has been the music director of St. Timothy’s Anglican, where his skills led that church to install a new and magnificent organ that he designed.
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