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Genre: Classical

Period: 2000s-present

Region: Ontario

Rich Coburn

Rich Coburn is a multi-talented musician, who has had a long history of taking many diverse roles within the music world. He has worked as an operatic and choral music director, a pianist, an organist, a vocal coach, and a composer.
He was the Associated Conductor for Volcano Theatre’s, Treemonisha, which is where he got his passion for reimagining how opera can be created and performed. This led him to pioneering techniques for recording opera with virtual instruments. If he doesn’t know how to do something, he is more than equipped in teaching himself. He did this for Pointe-à-Callière Museum’s Vikings- Dragons of the Northern Seas exhibition, when he taught himself sound design in order to create their auditory landscape. This also occurred when he was hired as an organist for Christ Church Calgary, despite not having done any formal training.
In more recent years however, he has expanded his already diverse portfolio by being the founder and director of BIPOC Voices. Back in 2017 he was living in Richmond, Virginia when the Unite the Right, a white supremacist rally, took place in Charlottesville. This led him to confront and reflect on his own experiences with white supremacy in classical music and its institutions. He realized that he would not be able in good conscience to continue down the path he was on unless there was an institutional change, which is where BIPOC Voices was born.
BIPOC Voices is a database of BIPOC composers and their vocal work, which includes but is not limited to genres such as opera, oratorio, and vocal chamber music. Their overall goal is to support those who want to be in the industry who wouldn’t have historically been present in classical music, by removing barriers for them in order to diversify the genre. At BIPOC Voices he is a Strategic Repertoire Development Consultant whose role is to bring all his knowledge in order to help orchestras expand their sound by adding works done by minorities to their repertoire. While he is leading BIPOC Voices, he is also teaching courses on business and entrepreneurship for musicians at McGill University, while also working on his own career creating and performing music.

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