An avid chamber musician, teacher, and conductor, Vernon Regehr served on the faculty of the Kinhaven Music Festival in Vermont for many years and has taught at numerous other festivals. He has collaborated with New Orford, 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 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 an 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 released an album of Andrew Staniland’s Calamus song cycle, which he commissioned with soprano Jane Leibel, and collaborated with author and filmmaker Kenneth J. Harvey to reimagine the cycle as a collection of short films.
Regehr is on faculty at Memorial University’s School of Music and serves as the musical director and conductor of Kittiwake Ballet.
