A native of Winnipeg, cellist Vernon Regehr is an active recitalist, chamber and orchestral musician, conductor, and teacher. Regehr is on faculty at Memorial University’s School of Music and serves as the musical advisor and conductor of Kittiwake Dance Theatre.
An avid chamber musician and teacher, he has performed numerous commissioned works for national radio broadcast. Regehr served on the performance and teaching faculty of the Kinhaven Music Festival in Vermont for many years, and has taught at numerous other festivals. He has collaborated with Ensemble Made in Canada, the Shanghai, Penderecki, Fitzwilliam, and Lafayette string quartets, Andrew Burashko, Mark Fewer, Suzie Leblanc, and Leon Fleisher. His performance of Carter’s cello sonata at the Groundswell New Music Festival commemorating Elliott Carter’s 100th birthday, “…showed a clear understanding of the work, while handling its hefty technical demands with finesse.” (Winnipeg Free Press)
He has made festival appearances with the First Avenue Chamber Players of New York City, Vancouver Early Music, Ottawa ChamberFest, Under the Spire (PEI), International Festival of Ensembles in St. Petersburg, Russia, Trinidad Arts Festival, University of Victoria, Artspring, SoundaXis New Music Festival, Hilton Beach, Toronto Summer Music Festival, Music in the Barns and the Chamber Music Societies of Quebec and Kitchener-Waterloo. He has also performed as a soloist with the Winnipeg Symphony, Newfoundland Sinfonia, Memorial University Chamber Orchestra, and the Cantata Singers of Ottawa.
His first solo album, Full Spectrum, features previously unrecorded Canadian works for unaccompanied cello, including Lamentations (Clark Ross), which was awarded the 2014 East Coast Music Award for Composition of the Year. John Terauds (Wholenote) writes, “…Regehr executes [Versprechen] with elegant ease, as he does every other one of the very difficult pieces on this album.” He recently commissioned and premiered Andrew Staniland’s Calamus song cycle with soprano Jane Leibel and is currently collaborating with author and filmmaker Kenneth J. Harvey to reimagine the cycle as a collection of short films. The first three, Aliment Roots, Calamus 6, and Lacrimosa, have been screened at film festivals nationally and internationally, and the final film Calamus Variations, will be completed later this year.
Regehr completed his undergraduate training at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, where he studied with Thomas Wiebe, Shauna Rolston, and Kim Scholes. He earned both his Masters and Doctoral degrees at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, studying with Timothy Eddy. He was the recipient of the Ina Gordon Fellowship for two seasons at the Tanglewood Music Centre and also performed at the Taos School of Music, Banff Centre for the Arts, Colorado College Conservatory, and the Oberlin Conservatory Summer Festival in Casalmaggiore, Italy.
While living in New York, Regehr taught cello in East Harlem with the renowned music school Opus 118, featured in the major motion picture Music of the Heart, starring Meryl Streep. He also appeared in Atom Egoyan’s film Sarabande, the fourth of six films from the Inspired by Bach series featuring Yo-Yo Ma.
His partner, Amy Henderson, is the Artistic Director of Projēkt Chamber Voices and Executive Director of Business and Arts NL, and they have two sons.
