artistic team
Artistic Director Timothy Shantz is a conductor, collaborator, tenor soloist, teacher and life-long dreamer. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of Calgary’s professional choir, Luminous Voices, and the Director of Choral Activities at the University of Alberta’s Department of Music. The Calgary Philharmonic Chorus and Spiritus Chamber Choir flourished during his tenure. As a conductor, he is recognized for the breadth of his work with choirs, both Luminous Voices and Spiritus Chamber Choir earned national choral awards, including Outstanding Choral Recording, and the Healey Willan Grand Prize for Choirs. In 2021, he was honoured to receive the Richard S. Eaton Award of Distinction from Choir Alberta in recognition of exemplary service to choral music in the province of Alberta. Timothy holds a Doctor of Music degree in Choral Conducting from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. His research involved extensive interviews with Sir James MacMillan and an analysis of his unaccompanied choral work Sun-Dogs. He is also a graduate of the University of Alberta’s Choral Conducting program (M.Mus 1999), and earned a degree in piano performance from Wilfrid Laurier University (Hon. B.Mus 1995). Conducting instructors include John Poole, Jan Harrington, Carmen Tellez, Frieder Bernius, Jon Washburn, Leonard Ratzlaff, Debra Cairns and Noel Edison. Richard Eaton Singers announced the appointment of Timothy Shantz as their Artistic Director commencing in September 2023.
Assistant Conductor, Jude Nwankwo is a Nigerian composer, choir trainer, singer, and choral conductor. He has performed with many choral groups in Nigeria, the USA, and Canada as a tenor. His compositions, which include sacred/secular choral and instrumental pieces, have been performed by different ensembles in Africa, Europe, and America. Notable among his compositions is “Iya Mi” (My Mother), commissioned by the Sub-Saharan Africa Commissioning project of the Morehouse College Department of Music, Atlanta, Georgia, for the Morehouse College Glee Club, and published by GIA Publications, Chicago, USA. Jude has a Bachelor and Master of Arts degree in composition from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), and a Master of Sacred Music in choral conducting from the University of Notre Dame, USA. He got the best graduating Student award from the Department of Music, UNN in 2008, and the academic achievement award from the Department of Sacred Music at Notre Dame in 2021. He taught undergraduate harmony, counterpoint, and conducting courses at UNN between 2010 and 2022. He is presently a doctoral student of choral conducting at the University of Alberta.
Leanne Regehr is a versatile and sensitive pianist who is widely recognized for her intuitive ability to collaborate with other musicians across an extensive range of repertoire. She is a keyboardist with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, and has performed with organizations including the Chamber Orchestra of Edmonton, Pro Coro Canada, Luminous Voices, the Okanagan Symphony Orchestra, Early Music Alberta, and the Academy Concert Series in Toronto. Leanne has been engaged as a répétiteur with Shreveport Opera, Mercury Opera, and Edmonton Opera and her dedication to the development of young singers has been shown through her work as a faculty member with Opera NUOVA, as a Coaching Fellow at the Aspen Music Festival and most recently with the Ukrainian Art Song Project’s Summer Institute in Toronto. She is featured on a live recording of Victor Davies’ Mennonite Piano Concerto with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra as well as on Fire-flowers, a recently released recording with Juno-nominated Calgary based choir, Luminous Voices, in works by Brahms and Wadsworth.
Leanne completed her Doctor of Music in Piano Performance at Northwestern University and explored further studies at the Banff School of Fine Arts and the Universitat Mozarteum in Salzburg. She has taught at the University of Alberta, and currently serves as piano instructor at The King’s University. For twenty three seasons, she has enjoyed playing the masterworks of the choral repertoire with Chorus Inspira (formerly the Richard Eaton Singers) in Edmonton, where she freelances as a soloist, vocal coach, recital partner, and adjudicator.
After early studies in London, alternate accompanist Jeremy Spurgeon won scholarships to study both piano accompaniment and organ at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, and later studied organ at the Geneva Conservatoire where he gained the Premier Prix de la Classe de Virtuosite. His teachers have been Eileen Sullivan, Eric Pask, Lorna Sergeant, Ronald Frost, Eric Chadwick, Lionel Rogg and Dame Gillian Weir.
In 1980, Jeremy took up the position as director of music at All Saints’ Anglican Cathedral in Edmonton, Alberta. Since then, he has appeared in concert with many ensembles, singers and instrumentalists in Canada, the United States and Europe. As well as his many and varied cathedral duties, Jeremy has a busy concert schedule. During the past season, he has played in performances of Britten’s Canticles I and II, Britten’s Winter Words, Schubert’s Die Schone Mullerin, Bach’s St John Passion, Dvorak’s Cello Concerto, Janacek’s Glagolitic Mass, Respighi’s Pines of Rome, Shostakovitch’s 13th Symphony, Handel’s Messiah and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons to name but a few. Jeremy is the resident accompanist for Pro Coro Canada, Edmonton’s semi-professional choir and recently appeared on Bravo! TV with aspiring singers from western Canada. He is heard frequently on CBC radio.
His favourite pastime is cycling in rural France with the wind behind him.
Britni Shingoose is a conductor and music educator from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She completed her Master of Music in Choral Conducting at the University of Saskatchewan in 2025 and is currently pursuing her Doctor of Music in Choral Conducting at the University of Alberta, studying with Tim Shantz.
Britni has maintained a private music studio since 2007, directed her church choir from 2009-2026, and taught as a public school band teacher for 10 years. In the fall 2025 semester, she served as conductor of the University of Saskatchewan Greystone Singers. In May 2026, she was honoured to participate in a conducting workshop with the National Youth Choir of Canada at Podium. While working on her DMus, she is currently the Teaching Assistant for Madrigal Singers and the Soprano Section Leader for Chorus Inspira.
In addition to her choral work, she is an active guest conductor for bands and orchestras. She has been invited twice to guest conduct an honour band at Albion College in Michigan and, in 2025, made history as the first female guest conductor of the Saskatoon Concert Band. She values collaborative music-making and working with a wide range of ensembles, but has always had a love for choral music.
Born in Richmond British Columbia, Andrew Whiteside is an active conductor, soloist and chorister, in Edmonton and across Canada. He holds degrees in Music from Trinity Western University and a Masters in Choral Conducting from the University of Alberta. Andrew is the Music Director at Inglewood Christian Reformed Church. Recent highlights include being a soloist for the premiere recording of Benedict Sheehan’s Ukrainian War Requiem, and Soloist for Adolphus Hailstork’s I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes with ProCoro Canada under the direction of Dr. Brainerd Blyden-Taylor. Andrew recently made his conducting debut at the Winspear where he lead Kappella Kyrie Slavonic Chamber Choir through pieces by Benedict Sheehan and Gyorgy Orban.
A graduate of the University of Alberta Master of Music in Choral Conducting Program, conductor, singer, percussionist, and Baritone Section Leader, Graham Fast, is a passionate and versatile musician. During his time in Edmonton, Graham has worked with many of Edmonton’s finest choirs including Richard Eaton Singers, Pro Coro Canada’s #connect youth program, the UofA Madrigal Singers, Da Camera Singers, Chronos Vocal Ensemble and Vocal Alchemy. Graham is always thrilled to put his conducting training to work and began conducting Edmonton-based Cantilon Choirs’ Vox Hominis men’s choir in September 2017. Graham then took on the role of assistant director of music at First Presbyterian Church, where he assists leading both the choir and hand bell ensemble. Graham completed his Bachelor of Music at the University of Calgary in 2014, primarily in vocal performance with an integrated focus on wind band conducting. In the fall of 2015, Graham began his choral conducting studies at the University of Alberta with the supervision of Dr. Leonard Ratzlaff, where he received the Queen Elizabeth II Graduate Scholarship in 2016 in recognition of his academic and artistic excellence. While Graham’s singing and conducting involvements in the Edmonton area develop, he still maintains connections with his Calgary roots, where he is frequently engaged with musical projects. Graham remains living in Edmonton, where he actively contributes to the flourishing choral community in the area, both as a singer and a conductor.
