Elaine Lau is a Toronto-based pianist and toy pianist. Versatile as both a soloist and collaborative artist, she has appeared as keyboardist and soloist with Canadian orchestras, and broadcast on CBC Radio 2 and National Public Radio in the United States. Equally at home with the standard canon, Elaine also has an avid interest in the contemporary repertoire for toy, solo and duo piano, and is active in the premiering of new works for these mediums. She has had the opportunity to collaborate with many composers, such as George Crumb, Canadians Linda Catlin Smith and WL Altman. Elaine has been a featured solo recitalist at the Canadian Opera Company’s Piano Virtuoso concert series, Arts and Letters Series, and at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario.
As duo pianist with Joseph Ferretti, Elaine has performed across Canada, including concerts at the Banff Centre, the Royal Conservatory of Music, McMaster University, and Mount Allison University. In the US, they performed at the Blue Lake Fine Arts Festival. The duo has premiered many works and in 2006, held an artist residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts. As recording artists, they participated in a disc of music by Jack Behrens released in 2009 by Capstone Records entitled “Soliloquies.” Lau and Ferretti have also given the Canadian premieres of duo piano works written by Gao Ping, a Chinese composer now residing in New Zealand, and of German composer Moritz Eggert.
As a founding member of junctQín, a keyboard collective of three devoted to performing new music, Elaine performed most recently at the Colours of Music Festival in Barrie, Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, Gallery 345, spOtlight Festival, and at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre of the Canadian Opera Company. Season highlights in 2011-2012 with junctQín include the Hart House Sunday Concert Series and a portrait concert of works by Austrian composer/improviser Karlheinz Essl, co-presented by the Music Gallery. She has also given premieres of works by US composer Jack Behrens, such as the world premiere of “No Wrong Notes” in 2002 at the Royal Conservatory of Music, and the Canadian premiere of Moritz Eggert’s “One Man Band II” in February of 2010. Elaine has also introduced to Canadian audiences to new works by composers Matthew Hindson (Australia) and Tomi Räisänen (Finland).
Elaine was coach and repetiteur for the Opera Theatre of Lucca, Italy, and a collaborative pianist for the Glenn Gould School and the Young Artist Performance Academy at the Royal Conservatory of Music. In addition to performing, Elaine remains dedicated to teaching: she has taught at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Arts and is active as an adjudicator and RCM/TAP examiner in Canada and the USA. She currently teaches piano at Wilfrid Laurier University, a post she has held since 2003, while maintaining a private studio in Toronto.
Elaine holds graduate degrees in Piano Performance and Piano Pedagogy from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Eugene and Elizabeth Pridonoff, and the Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory of Music. Elaine began her piano studies at the age of four with Shireen Moos; influential teachers include Peter Longworth, Valerie Tryon, June Caskey, Gwen Beamish, Golda Wainberg-Tatz and Karl Ulrich Schnabel.
