Resume

Tim Janz has over 40 years professional experience.

His career as a musician forms three main streams:

• Education,
• Composition, and
• Performance. 

Each of these streams feed into and support each other. Explorations in the classroom feed creative ideas and performance practice, just as performance experience informs education practices and composition choices.

All three work together to make music alive, and thrive.

Tim has always been fascinated with how music works.

Composers do not followrules that theorists devise, rather the experiment with concepts that do different  things at different times.

For over 30 years, Tim has gathered and compiled his own teaching materials that explore these musical concepts that composers explore.

Skip the memorization of rules (and all of their various exceptions) and instead, gain understanding of the basic concepts that composers return to again and again.

All ages, all levels. Tim has taught in elementary classrooms, adult workshops and university courses.

His private studio has students that have just begun their musical pursuits, as well as students that have already gotten music degrees but want to have a deeper understanding of music in their lives and careers.

He helps students prepare for RCM exams at all levels, he helps students prepare for university entrance, and he helps students who just want to explore how music really works.

Tim believes that the music he writes needs to make a strong connection to the performer as well as the listener.

He writes music that performers and audiences can engage in and enjoy.

Sometimes challenging, but not without rewards.

He has written elementary school musicals, and has been composer in residence for an amateur string orchestra.

He has written and arranged music for choirs, chamber groups and soloists, all with the needs and skill levels of the performers in mind.

In ensemble pieces, all of the parts are interesting and contribute in a strong way to the whole.

Lyrical melodic writing is supported by interesting countermelodies and engaging rhythmic and harmonic accompaniments.

When everyone contributes, everyone connects, and the musical experience transcends the here and now to that special place of musical magic.

In his performance practice, Tim has searched out new ways to express himself in a variety of different styles of music.

Classically trained on the modern flute, he was always also attracted to traditional/roots music and the rich heritage of Irish and Scottish dance music.

This led him explore wooden, simple system flutes, the one keyed Baroque traverso, and the eight keyed Classical or Irish flute.

He and his wife, Elisa had the band Prairie Ceilidh for a dozen years, recording two commercially released albums and giving concerts and playing for dances.

He recently has been performing baroque flute with Justin Luchinsky, harpsichord, and his group Chamber Muse.

He also had a lot of fun recently as a special skills extra, portraying a 19th century flutist on the set of Billy the Kid, a series streaming on Paramount Plus.

Orchestral

• Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra
• Calgary Opera
• Banff Centre Ballet and Opera orchestras
• Red Deer Symphony
• Kootenay Symphony
• Woodstock Strings
• Blue Arch Strings (soloist and conductor)

Music Theatre

• Banff Centre New Music Theatre

Chamber Music

• Chamber Muse Historical Society of Calgary
• Fine Blend Trio (flute, violin, viola)
• Banff Centre various ensembles
• Freelance work in Calgary and area

Choral

• Calgary Children’s Choir
• Festival Chorus
• Calgary Bach Society
• German Canadian Male Chorus

Film

• Billy the Kid (as a Special Skills Extra)

Traditional Music

• Prairie Ceilidh (vocals, guitar and flute) producing two commercially released recordings

Tim’s wooden flutes:

• Baroque, one-keyed flute “Beukers”
  ~1735 (A408, A415 Simon Polak, Netherlands)
• Classical, eight-keyed flute “Grenser”
  ~1792 (A430, A440 Martin Wenner, Germany)
• Irish, eight-keyed flute “Rudall and Rose”
  ~1830 (A440 Michael Grinter, Ireland/Australia)