Commissioned Composers
42nd Season Commissioned Composer
Marie-Claire Saindon (b. 1984) is a Franco-Ontarian composer based in Montréal. She began creating in high school, where she wrote and produced her first musical, Jeanne (Joan of Arc). She continued to participate in many collaborations, from choral pieces to scoring short films and full documentaries, to accompanying dancers, to fiddling in a team of folk musicians on a historical steam train. She sang in the award-winning female vocal ensemble Concerto Della Donna, led by acclaimed choral director Iwan Edwards.
Marie-Claire holds a bachelor’s of music in composition from the Schulich School of Music (McGill) and a master’s of music in composition—film and multimedia music—from Université de Montréal.
She is the winner of the SOCAN Young Composers' National Awards in the vocal category (2013), the Gregg Smith National Choral Composition Contest (2015), the Canadian Choral Composition Competition hosted by Chor Leoni (2018), the Ruth Watson Henderson Choral Composition Competition (2018), the inaugural Eastern Horizon Composition Competition (2018) and the Hong Kong Children’s Choir 50th Anniversary Composition Competition (2018). Her choral works are published with Boosey & Hawkes, Cypress Choral Music, Hal Leonard Choral, Earthsongs Choral Music, and Alliance Music Publishers, and her music is distributed by MusicSpoke.
Marie-Claire currently scores films (often with Melki Films), composes choral commissions and is composer-in-residence for the Montreal upper-voice ensemble Choeur Adleisia.
42nd Season Commissioned Composer
Sarah Jaysmith is an award-winning music director, composer, piano teacher and accompanist. She studied composition under Dr. Joseph Groocock as part of her Bachelor of Music Education from Trinity College, Dublin, and has been composing and arranging ever since!
Sarah's two compositional loves are choral music and musical theater. She has sung in many choirs, including the Dublin College of Music Chamber Choir and the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir. She has composed and arranged many works for choir and has also composed two musicals (Waking Dreams and One Plus One) and written the music for over 60 songs. She was the resident music director and arranger for the Broadway Chorus (Vancouver, BC) for 14 years.
Sarah particularly loves composing for SSAA choirs. Her arrangement of “Gartan Mother's Lullaby” was published by Pavane Publishing in 2016, after being premiered by Elektra Women's Choir (Vancouver, BC). Elektra (under the direction of Morna Edmundson) also commissioned her to arrange “Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella,” which was published by Cypress Choral Publishing in 2019. Both pieces were premiered at their Christmas concert, “Chez Nous,” in 2015. In 2018, she was commissioned by Bella Voce, a women’s choir in Reno, Nevada. Bella Voce (directed by Jennifer Tibben) asked her to compose an original piece, “Stronger Together,” which premiered in their spring concert that year.
Sarah is honored and thrilled to have been chosen as this year’s commissioned composer for the Santa Fe Women’s Ensemble and to have the chance to work with Raymond Raney’s powerful text.
She is originally from Ireland and has recently moved back there after living in Canada for many years. She lives with her husband, Gil; her son, Galen; and their two house rabbits, Ethan and Freda.
Raymond Raney - Poet
Raymond Raney describes his lifelong love affair with poetry this way: “I write. I have been writing since the fifth grade. But I’ve always thought of myself as a poet. Not that I’m published, but that has been my choice. I write for myself and for those for whom I write my poetry.
“My formal higher education began with a major in English literature with an emphasis on creative writing, but journalism became my second major, and soon I was writing for a living. However, poetry was the constant, a way of apprehending feelings and focusing myself.
“I worked as a journalist for 15 years and came to Santa Fe as news editor at the Santa Fe New Mexican. When that career path ended, I moved my focus to the visual arts and received degrees in art history and photography, and taught media studies at the University of New Mexico and Santa Fe Community College. After 12 years, I answered the call to ministry and was ordained as an Episcopal priest in 2006.”
Fr. Raney’s ministry began at St. Bede’s in Santa Fe. He was rector of Church of the Holy Cross in Edgewood for nearly 10 years before being appointed Canon to the Ordinary of the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande. Although retired in 2019, he currently serves as interim Priest in Charge at Trinity on the Hill Episcopal Church, Los Alamos.
Concerning the 2022 commission, Raymond Raney shares, “Having previously worked with composer Linda Rice Beck, I was asked to write a poem based on the 1913 painting St. Bride by John Duncan. In keeping with the legend, the work depicts two angels bearing St. Bride from the Isles of Scotland to the Nativity in Bethlehem to serve as midwife to the birth of the Savior. Collaborating with Sarah Jaysmith on the text of the poem was a delight.”
