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Announcing our Artistic Producer!
We are excited to share that Roan Ma will join Continuum as Artistic Producer for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 seasons through our Mentorship in Artistic Production (MAP)!
Pairing her performance practice and arts management knowledge with an inquisitive approach to curation, Roan brings an exciting set of skills to our organization. Over the next two seasons, Roan will join Continuum’s Artistic Director and Operations Manager in the day-to-day processes of the organization, including programming and curation, collaboration, commissioning practices, grant writing and reporting, contracting and scheduling musicians, working within a budget marketing, and general event production.
This two-year mentorship period will culminate in a concert curated by Roan in the 25-26 Season complete with a full budget and resources. This is a project we intend to continue every two years to offer experience to a new generation of artistic leaders. We aim to share knowledge of administrative infrastructure to allow artists to go forward and create projects responsibly and sustain operations in good practice.
Roan Ma is a multi-faceted musician passionate about creating space within the classical music world where diverse voices are represented. Her work focuses on rediscovering music and musicians obscured by time and social constrictions, as well as challenging the conventions of classical violin through contemporary repertoire. Her recent research explores the intersections of race, culture, gender, and other identities within music.
Roan received her BM and MM degrees in violin performance from the Manhattan School of Music, graduating from her Masters with the 2018 Hugo Kortschak Commencement Award for Outstanding Achievement in Chamber Music. She then received her Master of Music Education from Columbia University’s Teachers College in 2020. During her decade-long tenure in New York City, Roan performed in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Merkin Hall, and the United Nations Headquarters. She also worked at Manhattan School of Music’s Orto Center for Recording Arts and Distance Learning as both a Recording Engineer and as the Recording Arts Manager. Currently, Roan is pursuing a DMA in violin performance at the University of Toronto studying under Jonathan Crow and Mark Fewer.
Recent accomplishments include a performance as soloist with University of Toronto’s Contemporary Music Ensemble in Giacinto Scelsi’s violin concerto, Anahit. In summer 2023, Roan was awarded the France-Canada Cultural Exchange Experience France Award, allowing her the opportunity to attend IRCAM’s ManiFeste in Paris. She was also selected to participate in Continuum Contemporary Music’s 2023 HATCH mentorship program, performing at the Toronto Summer Music Festival, the BIGLAKE Festival, and Ottawa Chamberfest. At the University of Toronto, she was a 2023-24 Irene Miller Chamber Music Fellow. During summer 2024, she was a recipient of the Carolyn and Robert Lake Foreign Study Award as well as a Fellow at Bang on a Can’s Summer Festival, where she performed alongside the Bang on a Can All-Stars during LOUD Weekend at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
Roan also leads an active academic life in addition to her performance career. Recent paper and lecture-recital presentations of her research at conferences include Female Baroque Composers Hidden in the Male Canon at the Rutgers University Musicological Society’s Graduate Student Conference, Problems in Progress and Preservation Within Music Conservatories at Columbia University’s “Facing Climates” Conference, Kaija Saariaho’s Electronics: Reconceptualizing Authorship in Composer-Engineer Collaboration at Carleton University’s Music, Sound, and Liminality Conference, and Her Music or Their Music?: Electronics in Kaija Saariaho’s Compositions and Career at McGill University’s Graduate Music Symposium. Her doctoral research at the University of Toronto concentrates on music for violin and electronics from a pedagogical and performance perspective.