Gary Slaight Scholarship Brings Canadian Talent to Berklee

Canadian enrollment at Berklee has almost tripled since 2005

July 8, 2013 – Vancouver musicians Elise Boeur and Natasha Pheko have been awarded the prestigious Slaight Family Scholarship, established by Gary Slaight, for study at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. Both of this year’s scholars — Boeur, a fiddler who has studied and performed in Ireland and Norway, and Pheko, a vocalist who studied at the Sarah McLachlan School of Music — will attend Berklee, the world’s largest college of contemporary music, this September.

“Over the past five years, we’ve had the opportunity to help bring amazing talent from Canada to Berklee College of Music,” said Slaight. “We congratulate this year’s winners Elise Boeur and Natasha Pheko.”

“To know that the Sarah McLachlan School of Music has launched Natasha to pursue her dreams, to benefit from Berklee’s excellence in contemporary music education, with the generous support of a great Canadian philanthropist, is proof to me the power music has to create community and foster young people,” said Sarah McLachlan.

Vancouver based Elise Boeur’s fiddle style ties together her diverse influences – Nordic, Celtic, jazz, and country music – with her signature light touch. At 14, she visited Ireland to study Donegal fiddling and the Gaelic language. Three years later, she moved to Ireland and supported herself as a busker while steeping herself in the Irish fiddle tradition. Back home in Vancouver, she studied a variety of styles at the VCC School of Music, including free improv and jazz. She later developed a fascination with Scandinavian folk music, leading her to convert one of her violins into an eight-stringed Norwegian hardingfele fiddle. In 2012, she received a BC Arts Council Professional Development grant to study traditional Norwegian music at Telemark University College, in Norway. For more information, visit eliseboeur.com.

Born and raised in Vancouver, vocalist Natasha Pheko has been taking time to explore R&B, folk, neo-jazz, and other genres, discovering which styles best suit her voice and personality. During high school, she studied at the Sarah McLachlan School of Music, a music program offered at no cost to underserved youth in Vancouver. Inspired by artists such as Lianne La Havas, Joni Mitchell, and Laura Mvula, she began writing her own material. In 2012, she co-founded the all-girl a capella six-piece My Lovely Ladies. After months of performing and recording, the group was selected to compete on CBC’s Searchlight: On The Coast. Visit Pheko’s YouTube page or listen to My Lovely Ladies on Soundcloud.

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