Since 1996 the Riverdale Ensemble has brought its brand of polished, professional and innovative chamber music performance in a warm, welcoming and informative atmosphere to concert audiences in Toronto and other locales in Ontario and elsewhere.

We take special pleasure in seeking out and performing music of the highest quality and audience appeal that is infrequently performed and deserves to be more widely known.  Each season sees the Toronto area premieres of previously unheard or unpublished works.  The centre of our repertoire is music in the Romantic idiom - from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries - that speaks both to the heart and to the head.  Composers of nations from Australia to Armenia are represented in our concerts, and we have a longstanding fondness for 20th century English music.  Support of current Canadian composers through commissioned works is one of our goals.  When more familiar music is programmed, our aim is to present it in original ways, with a view to enriching understanding of the music and its context beyond simple performance.

The Ensemble performs music for a variety of instrumental combinations, from solos to small orchestras, with the core members (whose backgrounds are oulined below) supplemented by guest artists as required.  Some concerts involve collaboration with other instrumental groups, vocal ensembles and graphic artists.

The Riverdale Ensemble’s highly praised and widely distributed debut CD, “Foliage”, was released in 2000.  Further recordings are in the planning stages.

The Ensemble’s parent organization, Riverdale Concert Productions Inc., is a not-for-profit corporation (Ontario Corporation No. 1635816), with a Board of Directors composed of music industry professionals and community supporters from Toronto and York Region.

The members of the Riverdale Ensemble are also active in historically informed performance using authentic period instruments, through their parallel group Ossia.

Pianist Ellen Meyer was born and raised in Toronto and graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree in piano performance from the University of Toronto, where her teachers were Jane Coop and Pierre Souvairan.  Since then she has performed as soloist, chamber musician and accompanist throughout Canada, in the U.S.A. and in Germany.  Her recordings include an album with the Bowkun Trio (Duke Street) and three CDs with the Cantores Celestes women's chamber choir (Furiant), as well as soundtracks for feature films and documentaries.  Along with her chamber music activities, she accompanies a wide variety of instrumentalists and choral groups in and around Toronto.  She has been featured as "Musician in our Midst" in WholeNote magazine.  Besides being a musician, Ellen is also a painter, having exhibited and sold her works since her teens, and is the designer of our logo.
 
 

Clarinetist/saxophonist Stephen Fox, besides performing, is one of a handful of clarinet builders in the Western Hemisphere, designing and producing both modern and historical instruments, which are played professionally in Europe, Japan, the U.S.A. and Canada.  Born in England and raised in Western Canada, his first field of study was physics, in which he achieved a Master of Science degree from the University of Saskatchewan, before deciding on a career in music and receiving a Bachelor of Music in clarinet performance.  He performs orchestral and chamber music in the Toronto area, and has presented recitals and lectures in Europe and the U.S.A. as well as across Canada.  Since 1994 he has taught annually at Musikk Instrument Akademiet in Norway, and in 2004 was invited to teach at the Third International Masterclass for Clarinet at the University of Ostrava in the Czech Republic.  His work has been featured on the CTV National News, and he has been profiled as "Musician in our Midst" in WholeNote magazine.
 
 

Violinist Joyce Lai is from an illustrious musical family, her father being the noted conductor Tak-Ng Lai.  She spent her earliest years in Austria, but grew up in the Toronto area.  She holds a Bachelor of Music Degree from the Manhattan School of Music in New York City, where she was a student of Lucie Robert, and a Master of Music Degree as well as a Performer Diploma from the Indiana University, where she studied with Nelli Shkolnikova.  Besides chamber music and professional orchestral playing, Joyce has performed on numerous occasions as featured soloist with orchestras in the Toronto area and elsewhere.  In 1994, she made her debut as a soloist with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, as well as her European debut with the Szeged Symphony Orchestra in Hungary.  She has recently returned from Hong Kong, where she performed with the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong and taught at the Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts and Hong Kong Baptist University.
 

 
 
 
 
 
 

The early morning rehearsal (Edvard Munch)

Contemplating the economics of chamber music (Edvard Munch)