Choral Companion

A native of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Frances Farrell pursued her music studies in Winnipeg, graduating with both Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Education degrees from the University of Manitoba. She subsequently earned a Master’s Degree and Artist’s Diploma in Vocal Performance from McGill University. Frances recently earned her Doctorate of Musical Arts in Choral Conducting from the University of Toronto. Currently, Fran is based in Halifax where she directs a community choir called the Dartmouth Choral Society as well as senior high choirs as part of the Halifax Regional Arts program. In addition to her role as a high school music educator, Fran has worked as a choral clinician in Nova Scotia, Ontario, Manitoba, and Alberta.

Along with his busy performing schedule Tenor Jason Davis is the founder and Artistic Director of the Broadway Company Players Music Theatre Ensemble and Halifax’s Breaking Waves Vocal Theatre Company and he is also a founding member of the Conservatory Nova Scotia Association where he currently sits on their Board of Directors as treasurer. He also maintains a very active private teaching studio through Davis Vocal Studios and the Maritime Conservatory of Performing Arts where he offers voice lessons and coachings, RCM vocal exam preparations, RCM speech arts and drama lessons and also theory and ear training lessons. Many of his students have consistently placed or won numerous regional, provincial and national festivals and many have also gone on to pursue studies in vocal and theatre performance degrees at top undergraduate and graduate programs throughout North America.

Mezzo-soprano Lucy Hayes Davis is pleased to call Halifax home. Lucy returned to Nova Scotia in 2007 after pursuing intensive voice pedagogy studies with Dr. Scott McCoy and Marvin Keenze at Westminster Choir College, where she completed a Masters degree. Lucy went on to further operatic studies at the Hartt School joining the voice faculty there in 2001. In addition to maintaining a large voice studio, she taught all of the diction courses and a voice class for students majoring in Music Education. In Nova Scotia Lucy has taught voice at Dalhousie and Acadia Universities as well as Lyric Diction, Voice Pedagogy and Voice Clinics for students in the Dalhousie acting program. She acts as music director for the Elementary and Junior Broadway Company Players, Lucy will return for her seventh year as a vocal coach for the Halifax Summer Opera Festival in 2021. Lucy is also an active adjudicator and clinician.

As a teacher, Lucy has voice students that have been accepted in both undergraduate and graduate programs across Canada and the United States. Her students consistently place high in music festivals and have won many talent-based scholarships.