Keillor, Elaine - The Canadian Encyclopedia

(Frances) Elaine Keillor. Pianist, musicologist, b London, Ont, 2 Sep 1939; ARCT piano 1951, BA (Toronto) 1970, MA musicology (Toronto) 1971, PH D musicology (Toronto) 1976. Her piano teachers included her mother, Lenore Stevens Keillor, Reginald Bedford (intermittently 1947-65), and, for brief periods, Claudio Arrau (master classes in Stratford, Ont, 1956) and Harold Craxton (in London, 1959 and 1962). At 11 she became the youngest ARCT graduate in the history of the RCMT and that same year she began her professional career as a recital and concerto pianist. In 1958 she won the Chappell medal, awarded by the music publishing house to an outstanding young pianist in the Commonwealth.


	Keywords

	Pianists

Keillor performed with orchestras in southern Ontario, Buffalo, and Germany, playing concertos by Bach, Schumann, Saint-Saëns, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, and others. She appeared in the USSR in 1962 and was heard elsewhere in Europe. She also performed on CBC and NBC radio and TV. A committed champion of Canadian music and of women composers, she premiered works by many Canadians including Patrick Cardy, Nicole Carignan, Michael Colgrass, Clifford Ford, Vivian Fung, Mary Gardiner, Peter Paul Koprowski, Alexina Louie, Elma Miller, Mark Mitchell, Jean Papineau-Couture, David Thériault, and John Weinzweig. Keillor gave a solo recital at Carnegie Hall in 1984. In Canada, she gave recitals in Quebec City and Winnipeg, but appeared most often in Ottawa and Toronto. She also gave duo performances with Christina Petrowska-Quilico and various chamber music groups. After 1990, Keillor performed often, for such occasions as the Year of Indigenous Peoples (1993), the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival (1998), and the Festival of Music by Women (2002). Between 1998 and 2002 she made a series of recordings for Carleton Sound.

Keillor was a teaching assistant 1972-4 at the University of Toronto and taught 1975-6 at York University 1976-7 at Queen's University, and 1984 at McMaster University. In 1977 she joined the faculty at Carleton University, where she remained as of 2002. Specializing in musicology and ethnomusicology, she held particular responsibilities for the university's Canadian music program. Keillor engaged in biographical and bibliographical research relating to Canadian musical life in the late 19th and 20th centuries, including a bibliography of Canadian items in The Musical Courier (1974 and 1979, copies deposited at National Library of Canada). She conducted extensive musical research among the native peoples of the Northwest Territories and northern Quebec. She edited volumes of Canadian piano and orchestral music in the CMH series (vols 1 and 6), contributed program notes for the NAC, assisted in the preparation of Compositeurs canadiens contemporains, and wrote for EMC and The New Grove Dictionary.

Keillor was a member of the American Musicological Society (1992-96), the Society for Ethnomusicology (1995-97), a representative to the Canadian University Music Society (1994-99), and director of the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada (1997-99). In 2000 she became chair of the CMHS, of which she had been vice-chair 1989-2000. In 1999 she received the first Canadian Women's Mentor Award in the arts and culture category.

Selected Writings

'Wesley Octavius Forsyth, 1859-1937,' CMB, 7, Autumn-Winter 1973

'Leontzi Honauer (1737-ca 1790) and the development of solo and ensemble keyboard music,' PH D thesis, University of Toronto 1976

'The heritage of Canadian composition,' Booklet of the 30th Anniversary Conference of the Canadian League of Composers (Windsor 1981)

'Suites for winds and keyboard of the early classical period,' Winds Q, vol 1, Spring 1981

'Classical music in Canada: from the founding of New France to the centennial of Confederation,' OKanada (Ottawa 1982)

'Les tambours des Athapascans du Nord,' Recherches amerindiennes au Québec, vol 15, Winter 1985-6

'The role of youth in the continuation of Dogrib musical traditions,' Yearbook for Traditional Music, vol 18, 1986

'La naissance d'un genre musical nouveau, fusion du traditionel et du 'country',' Recherches amerindiennes au Québec, vol 18, Winter 1988-9

'The conservative tradition in Canadian music,' Célébration:

'Musical activities in Canada's new capital city in the 1870s,' Musical Canada

John Weinzweig and His Music: the Radical Romantic of Canada (Metuchen, NJ 1994)

'Finding the sounds of Canada's musical past,' Fontes Artis Musicae, 21, 1994

'Indigenous music as a compositional source: Parallels and contrasts in Canadian and American music,' Taking a Stand: Essays in Honour of John Beckwith (Toronto 1995)

'The voices of First Nations women within Canada: Traditionally and presently,' Australian-Canadian Studies, 14, 1996

'The elusive sounds of Canada's heritage,' CAMMAC Journal, Feb 1996

'The Canadian soundscape,' Profiles of Canada, 2nd ed (Toronto 1998)

'Chanson de Riel: A musical rubbaboo,' Les Cahiers de la Société québécoise de recherche en musique, 2, 1998

Author Helmut Kallmann, Betty Nygaard King

Discography

Piano Music by Torontonians 1834-1984. 1984. World WRC1-3315

Piano Pieces of Barbara Pentland. 1997. Musicworks

Views of the Piano Sonata. 1998. Carleton Sound CD-1002

By a Canadian Lady: Piano Music 1841-1997. 2000. Carleton Sound CD-1006

Canadians at the Keyboard. 2000. Carleton Sound CD-1008

Canadian Sounds. 2001. Carleton Sound CD-1007

Romance: Early Canadian Chamber Music. 2002. Carleton Sound CD-1009

Mary Gardiner Works for Piano and Voice. 2002. Conservatory Canada

Bibliography

Fraser, Hugh. 'Full circle,' The Hamilton Spectator, 19 Oct 1985

Pritchett, Jennifer. 'Professor honoured for role as mentor,' Ottawa Citizen, 28 Jan 1999

New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians

Links to Other Sites

Native Drums in the Context of World Instruments
This essay briefly examines commonalities of symbolism and usage as well as unique versions of First Peoples’ drums, other percussive instruments, wind and string inventions.

Elaine Keillor
Elaine Keillor profile (in French.) Additional information available in English. From the University of Ottawa website.

Music in Canada: Capturing Landscape and Diversity
A review of Elaine Keillor's book that focuses on "relationships between production and consumption of musical performances." From the website for the CAML Review. A PDF file.

Remembered Voices
Album notes and music clips from the recording "Remembered Voices," featuring Ralitsa Tcholakova, violin and Elaine Keillor, piano. From the Carleton Sound website.