Our judges for the 2021 National Performance Awards are David Gordon Duke and Jialiang Zhu.  Read more about the judges below.

David Gordon Duke was born in Vancouver and has degrees in historical musicology from the University of British Columbia, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Victoria. He also studied composition with the pioneer British Columbia composer, Jean Coulthard.  Though he has written music in many genres, he is probably best known for his many published educational works. He currently teaches at the School of Music, Vancouver Community College and contributes essays and reviews to The Vancouver Sun and the journal of the North American Music Critics Association, Classical Voice North America.

Chinese pianist Jialiang Zhu passionately embraces solo performance, vocal collaboration, and chamber music. She is the winner of the 2019 University of Toronto Doctoral of Musical Arts
Recital Competition. She performed Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy as a featured soloist with York Chamber Ensemble under the baton of Maestro Trevor Dearham. An enthusiastic collaborative pianist, she co-founded the Bedford Trio with violinist Alessia Disimino and cellist Andrew Ascenzo in 2016. They are the inaugural Irene R. Miller Piano Trio in Residency at U of T’s Faculty of Music. The trio is a champion of contemporary music and a keen collaborator with fellow artists. Their 2021-2022 concert season includes a recital that features six brand new pieces by Canadian emerging young composers dedicated to the trio and combines the music with digital/visual art by local artists. Jialiang’s latest vocal collaboration projects include recording Chinese-Canadian composer Alice Ping Yee Ho’s latest album A Woman’s Voice for high voices and piano; presenting a lecture recital at U of T on Chinese art song with both native and non-native Chinese-speaking vocalists; joining forces with soprano Xin Wang in recital at the Beijing Modern Music Festival and giving the Chinese premiere of Tanzer Lieder by Canadian composer Ana Sokolović.